The Army of Young
by Nothing To See Here Carry On
Summary: It started as a boarding school in the wilderness, where little Soviet girls grew up to be cold-blooded assassins. Eighty years later, it ended in HYDRA controlled Sokovia with fire and death and a SHIELD rescue operation. Only, rescuing these children — these extraordinary youth, these trained killers, is not the problem. The problem is what to do with them afterward.
1. Character Rota

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 **THE ARMY OF YOUNG**

 **CHARACTER ROTA**

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Currently, the Character Rota is now **FULL**. However, if you would like to submit an Additional Character, please let me know.

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 **CLASS-8 KAD** **ETS**

 **CHARACTER 1:** Ioannes "Ivan" Filonenko, Age 7 — _A Sokovian-Ukranian boy taken by HYDRA shortly before his fourth birthday; Ioannes is a precarious youngster with an aptitude for finding himself in places he really shouldn't, with an inclination to come and go as he pleases. A product of the same strain of the late Howard Stark's super soldier serum stolen by the Winter Soldier, Ioannes is in the fledgling years before major developmental change; and the disastrous consequences that such may bring._ [ALFENIDE]

 **CHARACTER 2:** Kachina Melnikoff, Age 13 — _A Russian-born teenager with the ability to move instantaneously from one location to another without physically occupying the space in between, Kachina was taken and raised by HYDRA since birth, brought to the Academy in order for HYDRA to make the most of her unique skills. Loyal and proficient, with a penchant for knives, Kachina shows a calm, collected demeanor and is, naturally, wary of strangers._ [ImmortalAssassinz] **  
**

 **CHARACTER 3:** Daniil "Danya" Sokolov, Age 15 — _Sokovian born and abducted from his school playground at the age of five, Danya's ten years under the tutorage of HYDRA has bestowed upon him the title of "the little politician". Known for his exceptional grasp of emotional and introspection intelligence, Danya, while personable to others, is motivated by a deep, visceral thirst for supremacy, and little else_. [Civillian]

 **CHARACTER 4:** Diederich Marc, Age 14 — _A German boy raised in a family of high-ranking HYDRA affiliates, Diederich was brought to HPEA-Volosovsk after the discovery of his latent ability to effectively possess the "soul" of the conscious being. Traditionally older than the other new recruits, Diederich, caught between the prospects placed upon him by HYDRA and reality of what his newfound power is capable of, struggles against the waves of indoctrination in order to keep himself 'whole'._ [Thenorseysnake]

 **CHARACTER 5:** Jean René "Anatoli" Dumont, Age 10 — _An outgoing young man of French descent, brought to HYDRA at the age of six, Anatoli is an outgoing boy with a good heart, intent to make friends, all while facing the expectations of becoming a soldier. Harnessing the ability to see and maneuver on a quantum level,_ _Anatoli's intelligence and desire to learn makes him one of the more personal HYDRA Kadets in_ _HPEA-Volosovsk._ [MyDude]

 **CHARACTER 6:** Cyrek Novak, Age 6 — _One of the youngest Kadets of_ _HPEA-Volosovsk, Cyrek is a Sokovian born Russian given to HYDRA willingly after his powers manifested. Known to be a walking embodiment of bad luck, Cyrek is a loyal young member of HYDRA known for his quiet intensity, a lack of aggressive performance compared to his age mates, and an absolute willingness to achieve the great HYDRA goal._ [Woflie]

 **CHARACTER 7:** Claire "Sonya" Thomson, Age 12 — _The child of HYDRA traitors, taken by force after the death of her family, Soyna has spent most of her childhood under the questionable care of HYDRA. Subject to testing before she was brought to HPEA-Volosovsk after the extent of experimentation resulted in powerful empathic abilities. Known for her sense of compassion and questioning of HYDRA doctrine, Sonya tends to spend most of her time being held back by the program heads._ [E.A.L. RUNWAY]

 **CHARACTER 8:** Alonya Volkov, Age 9 — _Raised in a Russian orphanage before_ _HPEA-Volosovsk, Alonya's opinion of HYDRA is not of kidnappers but saviors. Having recently aged up into the older section of the HEPA Program, Alonya, a quiet, reserved girl with a knack for firearms, who has intentions to please her trainers and fellow Kadets, for the simple reason that nobody has ever taken care of her as well, and wishes her to reach her true potential as much as HYDRA has._ [HGB]

 **CHARACTER 9:** James "Janek" Reidy Taktarov, Age 9 — _On the cusp of also moving onto the second area of Kadet training, Janek Taktarov is a smart, quiet boy brought to HYDRA after his mother's death; leaving behind a father who assumes his son shared a similar fate. Loyal to HYDRA after the standard degree of indoctrination, Janek is quickly growing to understand what it exactly means to be loyal to HYDRA, and while his confidence hasn't yet waned, his judgment on his own situation most certainly has._ [missfervent]

 **CHARACTER 10:** Nastya Marya Alekseev, Age 9 — _An intense youngster raised by the mob before HYDRA recruited her, Nastya is a talented combatant with the power to withstand major damage, and apply this buff to others if she so desires. Aware of HYDRA's indoctrination procedures thanks to a similar upbringing, Nastya finds herself one of few atheists in a population of believers._ [Liquidation]

 **CHARACTER 11:** Filipp II, Age 15 — _A result of genetic cloning experiments by the late Dr. Goodman, Filipp is a genetic duplicate intended to act as a 'biologically accurate framework' for patients affected by motor loss or illnesses in which directly affect the body, but not the active consciousness. Abducted by HYDRA after the project was hijacked before 'completion', Filipp flicks repeatedly between moments of lucidness and derangement, and thanks to intense physical conditioning and training, is more than capable of taking out his confusion on others far larger and older than he_. [Comanderr]

 **CHARACTER 12:** Flora Svoboda, Age 12 — _An extremely overconfident girl with a tendency towards pride, Flora is a capable combatant with the ability to use her vocal range in a wide range of abilities, from sonar to deafness-inducing high pitches. Born in Vietnam and raised initially in an orphanage, Flora was brought to HYDRA at the age of eight, after being chosen to be inducted into the HEPA program, a fate that has led Flora to become power hungry and faintly egotistical_. [Bambooozled]

 **CHARACTER 13:** Raisa Sarah Katz, Age 14 — _A quiet girl originally of Canadian decent, Raisa has been with HPEA-Volosovsk since her parents were killed in a car crash. A skilled liar, Raisa makes a sincere effort to play her part in order to avoid punishment or death, utilizing impressive skills in marksmanship with small firearms to a degree that qualifies her to, in the future, become a component HYDRA spy_. [The Lady Cloudy]

 **CHARACTER 14:** Vanesa Kuchár, Age 15 — _Dignified and confident, Vanesa is a Slovakian teenager with a personality most suited to what people largely consider of "spy". Having developed far earlier than most of her similarly aged peers, Vanesa is now in the latter months of her training and is expected to graduate sooner rather than later thanks to an aptitude for manipulation and ranged weaponry. Despite this front, however, Vanesa is personable when one manages to get through her protective exterior and greatly cares for her fellow peers._ [Lana]

 **CHARACTER 15:** Satoshi "Saveli" Imai, Age 11 — _One of the few kadets in the history of NEPA that was willingly drawn to HYDRA with means that didn't directly cause the demise of his entire family, Saveli is an Inhuman with the strange ability to utilize his blood in a range of bizarre and useful means, from acid that burns away skin to healing properties. Described as being at base level "creepy", Saveli takes great pleasure in thoroughly weirding out his peers, wherever they happen to like it or not._ [deadlyanimalsarecute]

• **ADDITIONAL CHARACTERS** •

• Regina Anna "Ginny" Pasternak — [Rosemarie Benson]  
• Antonin Saveli Polterev — [Wulfekin]  
• Yakov "Yasha" Aksakov — [ME BITCHEEEES]  
• Lamh Uchitair — [ryzlow98]  
• Agent-Commander Dara Bartos — [Norseyhorse]


	2. Part One, Chapter One

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 **| PART ONE |  
** CHAPTER ONE  
 **››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹**

Novomodarsk International Airport still suffered structural damage after the Movement for Free Sokovia riots; the destruction caused to terminal A had still yet to be repaired despite having been caused late last year, and as Coulson made his way across the floor for international passengers under the name Maximilian Doležal, he pushed his sunglasses further up his nose to shield his eyes from the bright sunlight, which managed to escape through the cracks in the nearby window's blacked out glass. It was deafening; on top of the light, the roar of turbo engines also slipped through, and with the warble of foreign voices acting as a potent undercurrent, Phil Coulson of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division blinked away the jet-lag and winced at the chaotic scene of international travel before him.

Unless he opened his mouth, Coulson was confident that he'd pass for Sokovian; the blue eyes and hair that had lightened from age helped, his choice of attire, helped, to the point that he was unconcerned about immigration based on his appearance alone. It wouldn't matter much in the short-term; the papers he carried and flashed in pretend exasperation to the nearby gate guard and immigration officer was enough of an act, for now, but he had orders to be discrete.

For an undisclosed period, to boot. So when Coulson stepped off the plane to feel the chill of northern Sokovia, he was as discrete as any well trained SHIELD agent could be, given the circumstances.

A country that had been beaten down by a cold-blooded dictator and destroyed by war, Sokovia had become acclimatized to native citizens bearing the documents of foreign organizations, but that did not mean that the people were strictly happy about it. _Yankie_ _kurva_ was the latin term; the Cyrillic word itself went over Coulson's head — but the sentiment could be understood by mere emotion alone. Americanophobia was rife in Sokovia. The immigration officer sneered as he waved Coulson through, with his fake Sokovian passport and his, also fake, papers entitling him to the perks of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

"Ignore it," Agent-Commander Dara Bartos, at least, did not have to pretend to be anything other than her ethnic Sokovian. Verbally, she greeted Coulson with a terse whisper — in English, but otherwise projected the body language of someone who was very glad to see Coulson, or more likely, the so-called Maximilian Doležal, and they embraced as family members might do, playing up the friendly act for anyone who happened to be watching. "There's a protest mounting on the east side of the district; we need to move."

"Ah," Coulson burst into what little he knew of Sokovian when they pulled away. "Dugo se nismo videli, Kako si?"

A smirk from the younger, shorter fellow agent. Bartos humored him in an accent infinitely more legitimate than his own. "Dobro sam, hvala. A ti?"

Coulson gave a side-eye glance to the immigration officer way yonder. He shrugged. "Tako-tako."

The smirk burst into a near grin, and Bartos laughed shortly as she led the way out, taking one of the two suitcases Coulson had on his person. A feature for show than actual requirement — Coulson could pack any and all necessary belongings in a small shoulder bag, if need be, but today was about authenticity; and that meant looking like the average diplomat who had been flung to the far end of the world at the whim of a far greater authority. That, and it was a classic show of respect from Bartos, a sort of deference that Coulson would understand.

At least, until they made the long trek down into the carpark and dumped his bags into a waiting SHIELD vehicle that looked alarmingly similar to a luxury ESV. Then, the cheerful demeanor of Bartos evaporated in the same time it took her to wrench open the back door and fling herself inside.

"I thought you complained about budget cuts," Coulson teased in what he hoped classed as friendly than that of accusative, and Bartos snorted.

"This? This is a gift from the Ambassador," she flicked a hand to the nearby window. "We've actually knocked a good couple of thousand of the price in order to make it functional."

The driver sat before them laughed. "All it needs now is the insignia."

"On _your_ life, mate." Bartos grimaced.

"This is our idea of _covert_." Coulson analyzed, slipping back comfortably into his native American accent now that he needn't perform.

Bartos shrugged. "We're foreign enough as it is," and then she blinked. "Well, I'm not, but I'm wearing American colors so I might as well be." The agent grimaced and set one booted foot against the flesh of her opposite leg's upper knee, and regarded Coulson plainly. "Novomodarsk is straight for foreign diplomats but after what happened with Prime Minister Kowalchuk, there's been more upset than normal. We don't expect to get hurt any more than usual, it's... just the other parties, we're concerned about."

It had been a nasty incident. Kowalchuk was an equally nasty piece of work who won a rigged election and used his old position as a junior bank official to fraudulently lend large sums of money to his own wife and parents. He then used the money to buy shares in areas that should have been going to the rebuilding effort in Novi Grad. Instead, it went into offshore bank accounts and private education for his six children; an undercover reporter got the limelight in Western Europe, and with the refugee crisis in full swing, nobody was all that surprised, but there was certainly outrage.

Sokovia had been rioting for years before the incident with Ultron; now it appeared to have come full circle.

And HYDRA was beginning to feel safe, which meant that Bartos' Infantry Battalion VI and the small contingency of Intelligence Agents stationed in the country suddenly had a _very_ good reason to be _very_ nervous.

"The reason why I'm here," Coulson added, but said nothing of his true motives — Bartos knew, and knew that Coulson knew; she was the one who had requested for additional personnel after... something with HYDRA went down, but Coulson only had to read Bartos' rather obvious body language to know that it was strictly confidential. More for the benefit of the driver than them. Sometimes the weight of the truth did that to good commanders.

The younger agent snickered, but the tightness of her mouth suggested that she was on edge. "When the, uh, _other_ Director—" this was said quietly, to avoid being overheard by the driver. "—informed me that you'd be the one reporting in some of my unit nearly freaked. You've got fans, old man."

Bartos got a glare for _that_ little sentiment, but Coulson let it go. You often had to, with SHIELD's Infantry Division. Dara Bartos was from a different strand of SHIELD; talkback was tolerated against Agents of the Intelligence Divison, even Tactics, so long as you got the job done. It was the Soldiers Vs. Suits mentality that couldn't be rubbed out no matter how many times Mace begged HR to try.

But Bartos wasn't disdainful of Coulson's work in Intelligence. Quite the contrary. Coulson had worked with both Bartos and this particular Battalion before, and he _did_ have adherents — it was a humbling thing to experience. Coulson respected the work SHIELD troopers did; he wasn't Agent Hand, or even Fury, using Troopers simply because they were _convenient_. During his early stint as Director, he'd gained as much popularity as Gonzolas had, and that was a tough opinion to garner. Troopers were notoriously stingy about falling under the command of regular Agents and their choice of figurehead tended to show it. It was the main reason why so many of them were found on the Iliad; the separation had only made them more effective, free from under the shadow of the field agents and intelligence personnel.

The opinion so far of Mace was... unreliable, however. Coulson couldn't figure out how the troopers felt simply because they didn't really know themselves.

"All I know is that he's _American_ and it sits uncomfortably with us easterners." Bartos shrugged again. "But then I've got Russia breathing down my neck so what the heck do I know?"

 **››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹**

There were six of them, today. Three little kids, two other ones who might be medium-aged and a bigger boy, easily over twelve.

Across the auditorium, where they held their daily moral assemblies, the new children stood in their ill-fitting uniforms and blinked at the sharp, strong looking kids who all stood proud in theirs, who stared back with general discontent and mutual understanding. There were twenty-four of them, boys and girls, divided into three lines of eight, smallest to biggest. They stood in front of the stage, while the new children had been instructed to stand before the chairs, facing the others at first but then told to turn around, so that they were all looking the same way.

It did not take them long to find out why. A tall man with grayed short hair, easily over sixty, walked into the room with a sense of utmost purpose, in the more form fitting uniform of the Russian army. He was hawkish, with a shrewd pair of blue eyes, but he smiled when he saw the children.

"Young comrades!" He greeted, in Russian. The children at the back, the ones who fit their uniforms, blinked in understanding. Only three of the new children understood — the older boy, one girl and one little boy. "Are you ready, soldaty?"

A thunderous noise from the children at the back. "Always ready, comrade!" They shouted back in the same language, and, as one, snapped their booted heels together as they lifted up both arms, their hands clenched into fists. "Hail Hydra!"

The man looked toward the other children, and gestured to them, his arms wide. "Young comrades," he repeated again. "It is tragic that you have come to us betrayed by the enemies of the True Purpose."

Confusion struck first, then bewilderment. One child dared look back at the others; the recipient of the glance simply looked back at them, impassive.

"But you are blessed, dear comrades! For you have been redeemed by HYDRA! Sent by the Master to serve the True Purpose and save the world from the enemy scourge!"

It was obvious that it meant little to the newer children. The other children meanwhile, especially the older ones, appeared to drink it in with some recognition; some of the younger ones simply stared in awe of the man in the uniform.

"Here, in our most glorious institution; the HYDRA Political Education Academy, you will learn everything you must need to become the saviors of this world — to bring the message of the Master to the ignorant, to destroy the enemies of the True Purpose." Excitement was present in his voice, as if he truly believed in the words he spoke; it affected the room around it, and the children, it left some of them feeling strange, inspired by the weight of meaning in his voice. "Here you will become true comrades, loyal to the order and superior above all! Hail Hydra!"

On cue, the children at the back all slammed their feet together and raised their arms; but they did not repeat the sentiment this time. Instead, they waited as another adult, a woman with her blonde hair pulled tight into a severe bun, walked up to the new children and told then — or simply forced them — to raise their arms in the same gesture. Once they were all stood with their arms thrown upwards, she and the other children thundered back as one.

"Hail Hydra!"

Once the sentiment had been adequately addressed, the blonde haired woman returned to the line and gestured for the children to turn around, so they were facing the other children again, and the small stage. A red-haired man sporting a matching beard stood above the children, dressed in form fitting black training fatigues, looking down with an unreadable expression pulling at the corners of his mouth. He and the one in the uniform, who was slightly taller than his counterpart but much smaller in overall comparison, shared a nod.

When he was sure that all attention from the new children was on him again, the man in the Russian uniform pointed to himself. "Comrade Klokov!" He shouted at them, and repeated himself. "Comrade Klokov!"

And, in response, the man with the red hair and the woman both shouted in unison. "Hail to Comrade Klokov!"

"Comrade Klokov!" The children, the ones who had been here the longest with their backs to the stage, shouted back in unison. "Hail Hydra!"

The silver haired one then pointed to the red-haired man, and said. "Comrade Askakov!" Another, very deliberate, point in his direction. "Hail to Comrade Askakov!"

Again, the other children spoke up. "Comrade Askakov! Hail Hydra!"

Comrade Klokov then gestured towards the woman. "Comrade Koneva! Hail to Comrade Koneva!"

"Comrade Koneva! Hail Hydra!"

The other children understood it, then. Some of the braver ones, mostly the youngest who found it to all be a good game, shouted out too. The gray-haired man nodded, and gestured to them. "Very good!"

With the introduction of the adults complete, the stern looking woman walked up to the very end of the line of children, on the left, and put her hand on the smallest boy's head. She patted down firmly, gesturing to him. "Comrade Patrik!" She said loudly, as she patted the boy's head again. "Patrik!"

The man with the red hair shouted. "Hail to Comrade Patrik!"

"Comrade Patrik!" The children shouted back in unison. "Hail Hydra!"

The other children joined in, but judging by the boy's face, he didn't understand why he was suddenly being called Patrik.

Next, the woman moved up the line and put her hand on a little girl's head. "Comrade Klara!" And again. "Klara!"

"Hail to Comrade Kalra!" The man shouted.

"Comrade Kalra, Hail Hydra!"

Next in line, a slightly larger blonde boy. "Comrade Pyotr!"

"No!" the spell was broken as boy shouted out, forcibly. He screamed in in broken English, and all heads turned sharply in his direction. "My name Peter!"

There was a tense silence. The children all blinked, alarmed, but nobody said anything — or even moved.

"Ne!" The woman, Comrade Koneva, snapped back. She spun the boy around and, shocking some of the newer ones, slapped him hard across with face with such force that the boy very nearly toppled over. He was saved from the full fall by her grip, which held the baggy sleeve of his sweater, and he hung there until the woman forced him back onto two feet, back straight. The other adults looked on impassively. "Ne!" Comrade Koneva moved in so close to the boy's face that their noses almost touched. "Ne! Py-TOR!" She jabbed a finger into his chest. "Pyotr!" A pause for emphasis. "Kalra!" She pointed back at the stunned girl. "Da?"

The boy nodded frantically.

"Comrade Pyotr!" She slapped him hard on top of the head and spun him back around.

Askakov looked sullen as he shouted out again. "Hail to Comrade Pyotr!"

"Comrade Pyotr, Hail Hydra!" The children shouted. Some of them were smiling, now. Not many, but some.

The second-oldest seeming boy became Aleksei. The girl became Margita. The oldest boy, when the woman came to him, too tall to have a hand on his head so settled for having his shoulders held, was called Diederich. Judging by the lack of expression on his face, he already knew; or was simply used to the whole thing already.

Once they all had their new names, Comrade Klokov clapped his hands together once and shouted a command in Russian. In response, all children at the front of the stage turned in one fluid motion, to face him. "Comrades!" he shouted.

The children brought their arms up again, feet stomping together.

"Hail, Hydra! Immortal Hydra! We shall never be destroyed! Cut off one head, and two more shall take its place! We serve none but the Master — as the world shall soon serve us! Hail Hydra! Hail Hydra! Hail Hydra!"

 **››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹**

The drive from Novomodarsk International to the SHIELD facility took at least an hour and a half; a trip made far quicker in Sokovia than it did America. It was partly the blame of gas prices going through the roof; nobody could afford to run a car unless it was necessary. As a result, the highways had little traffic and the surrounding roads were practically deserted. Especially in the inner cities, where travel bans on personal vehicles had been imposed on Sundays unless you had a permit, and all transport after twenty-one-hundred were banned on all major highways in an attempt to conserve gas. Coulson personally felt that it was in an attempt to crack down on civil disturbance, but Bartos had very little to say on the matter other than that, as SHIELD personnel, it didn't affect them.

So he was surprised when they pulled up to a derelict-looking hotel just off of a major road to the nearby city of Nemačkigrad, in the province of Volosovsk. Jet lag, coupled with the blur of high-speed travel and the small print of paperwork left Coulson's perception of time disturbed, and he squinted through the frames of his sunglasses as he tried to gauge the time. Easily gone evening.

The base was known as the Balmanor Hotel, a dismal affair that used to belong to a wealthy tourist conglomerate until the financial crisis of 2002, after Kamil Novoty's dictatorship and the whole enterprise of tourism fell apart against a constant onslaught of riots and recession. SHIELD acquired the site for a reasonable price and a word of secrecy from the government, and it was used up until Ultron primarily as a garrison for SHIELD peacekeeping infantry. After Kowalchuk, of course, nobody was entirely sure if this code of silence on behalf of the Sokovian government was kept, but the personnel here had no reason to be worried.

Balmanor, know effectively known as Camp Sebastian after the SHIELD military officer who died during Ultron's initial attack, was run down but still livable; a term that did not merit much comfort, as 'livable' was often a SHIELD soldier's shorthand for, "well I'm not _dead_ ". Power was maintained by a duel-core Palladium generator four floors down into the mountainside, and water was maintained through natural springs. Like most SHIELD bases in unstable locations, it was designed, on almost all fronts, to be as self-sustaining as possible in the event of an attack, but of course, survivability did not mean _comfort_. The base housed fifty-odd personnel and everyone was either bunked in three main buildings or, if you were really unlucky, seven unfinished pre-fabs made largely of concrete, metal sheeting and plywood.

Until a replacement for the SHIELD academy could be developed, all new personnel from Sokovia and the nearby continent all came here for initial training. It created an influx of manpower which bolstered the importance of what used to be a fairly overlooked position.

"Home sweet home," Bartos said with sober false cheer as the car drew to a hesitant stop before the main entrance. Coulson's bags were retrieved by a balaclava-clad Trooper not of the infantry but rather in the solid black uniform of Tactics.

Bartos greeted him by the name Koba.

"Room three-oh-four," the Commander directed to the Commando and, then, turned to Coulson. "Full wardrobe or...?"

"Leave it for now," Coulson replied. He'd rather not have anyone go through his things. The trooper, Koba, had his hands full so he couldn't salute in response; instead, he clicked his heels and turned smartly on his heels when Bartos dismissed him with a flick of the hand. Once he was out of earshot, with Coulson's things, the field director turned back to Bartos. "I take it I don't get much in the way of recess?"

"I think there's something you ought to see, first." Bartos replied grimly. "Besides," the Commander indicated towards a corner window three floors up. "The General wants to see you."

 **›››** **| HYENADA |** **‹‹‹**

SO this is... this thing.

Most of the main characters will probably all feature at some point; you had a glimpse of Diederich, Bartos, and Askakov. All of the characters won't be featured all the time; sort of how TV works, some characters have big chapters, some have small, and once the groundwork has been set, they'll all alternate and change in "prominence" as the story goes on. Some will feature heavily for one part of the story, some will taper off as time goes on, or only be mentioned in passing until later on in the story. This is to encourage gradual character development; it will mostly be character introductions up until part two. After that, we get into the deep stuff.

If any of you are interested, I've started writing up my post-chapter thoughts and ideas up on my LiveJournal page, as well as worldbuilding and general rambles on the MCU as a whole. You can find it at Max-Hyenada . livejournal (. com), and it's probably where I'll start writing up the essa- I mean, _answers_ , to the questions I get fairly frequently. It's where I thought-vomit. Come and whitness the horror that is my sleep-deprived mind if you so desire.

For frame of reference, most of what you will read about Sokovia is based on the Earth-616 and Earth-199999 on top of the MCU. Characters such as Kamil Novoty are really only found in the comics, but I brought them out to play because while this is Canon Assisted AU, I really have nothing to work with when it comes to the country as a whole. It's a scenario where there is little stuff to play with, lots of space to do it in.

Aside from that, we have a few more characters to wait for until we're ready and set in earnest.

Auf Wiedersehen!


	3. Part One, Chapter Two

•

 **| PART ONE |  
** CHAPTER TWO  
 **››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹**

Free Time was the single moment of the day where the Kadets could roam anywhere that wasn't restricted, within reason. It was described as being their only hour of personal freedom a day. Only, having endured three-thousand-two-hundred and fifty hours of Free Time across nine, nearly ten years, Daniil Sokolov had since discovered that Free Time wasn't exactly _free_.

It was personal, yes, but never free.

It was an exercise. Their trainers may wave them off and tell them to knock themselves out, take a break, have sone fun, but it wasn't a dismissal — it never was. It was just another examination of a Kadet's determination and commitment. It was a test to see whether or not a Kadet would truly devote themselves to HYDRA and, if they would, how far they would go. Free Time was a perfect excuse to examine that level of commitment, to analyze and investigate a Kadet when they thought they weren't being watched.

Some of the Kadets knew it, some didn't. It usually depended on the age.

The younger kids; Ivan, Cyrek — all the Little Ones who were in the U12's dorm and hadn't yet graduated into Prep Two all thought Free Time was a game. They played; sometimes hard and sometimes smart, but they played. They found it fun, and it was a perfect time to analyze their progress so HYDRA encouraged it. For the older ones, those in Prep 2, it was evenly split. Some understood what Free Time really was and they used it to better themselves. Some either didn't understand or didn't care and used to try and get away from the rhetoric for an hour.

HYDRA knew, of course, what they were up to either way. They've known them for years — raised them, molded them, and beyond that, they have other methods. So when little Peter-not-Pytor runs off to try and find a way to escape down the dark hallways where he thinks nobody will find him or come looking, the high-resolution cameras dotted on every single corner in every single room watched by a team of HYDRA psychologists sees everything.

(He's grabbed maybe twenty minutes later by one of the trainers and Danya hasn't seen him since, so he's probably in the Freezer — he's ruled out expulsion because it's too early, too soon. Although in his opinion, it's more of a when than an if)

And then, of course, there was Danya and his lot, the over fourteens who were in the latter days of the program. For them, Free Time took an _entirely_ different meaning.

Vanesa wore her hair in a braid today, a cedar brown tail only a shade lighter than his own which bounced over her smoothly muscled shoulders. Dayna watches her watching him watching her as she examines all the weaponry used for close combat near the Box. She ignores the combative-sectioned batons and the ordinary-seeming hammers, the fire axes, and the bizarre and thus rarely taught short-swords and staffs, but Danya catches the way her eyes slide over them with longing as she picks up a pair of delicate throwing knives. The ones she picks are of the prissy silver sort, which Danya can — and has, once when he was thirteen in a fit of frustration — bent in half easily.

She whips them at the target with fluid motions, and they all hit the center rings, but her eyes are distant, bored.

Danya meanwhile looks back at Filipp with a smile and gestures to carry on from where they last were, squaring each other off on one of three springy mats covering the training area designated for hand-to-hand martial arts combat. The kinder sort; not the hard wooden floor where the real fights are held, which leaves anyone unlucky enough to fall with bruises. They throw punches and grapple back and forth with a semi-serious force that is more show than actual fight. Filipp even falls back at one point, but Danya doesn't win outright (he never will and he knows it: Filipp is the best hand-to-hand combatant in the history of NEPA and he hasn't lost once in the past year and a half, not even to trainers) and Danya ends up getting floored himself when Filipp catches his leg and side kicks his kneecap, scissoring his dead-side leg behind Danya's heel to devastating effect.

If this was a real fight; if Danya was an enemy of Filipp's, he'd be choked out and dead in three seconds maximum. Instead, because this is practice and Filipp never really goes to extremes despite being more than capable of it, he allows Danya to tap out and they untangle themselves. They both know the move; both been taught it, and Danya can do it himself — he even recognized that Filipp was baiting him, but the point isn't to kill each other. They're showing off.

Showcasing their skills for HYDRA during Free Time is the norm, now. They make use of every skill they can during their hour to the extent of which they are capable of, short of killing or severely maiming another student, just to show that they can, that they are _worthy_.

It's a show; a performance, and there is none better than Vanessa when it comes to acting.

Against his will, Danya looks back to his age mate. Flinging knives isn't what she wants to do. After the brace is spent she pulls a curl to her mouth, brushing it across her lips, then winks at Danya as she saunters off to the rope climbing area.

Danya watches her go, his stomach churning as her hips swing with every artful step. HEPA has trained him in image projection and the importance of crowd-pleasing since he was eleven years old, so he knows what to do; he's instinctively dragging his tongue along the bottom of his lip and flashing his teeth at her in response before he can even think about it, but it's nothing like what she has to go through.

See, there are limits. Danya is tall, broad, and not bad looking by any means, rapidly aging into a face that is somewhere between handsome and cute (he, and HEPA, are hoping that he'll grow out of the latter by the time he's ready to infiltrate the Sokovian government, but who knows) and that means he has all the physical elements needed to catch the eye of man and woman alike, but he doesn't have to go to the same lengths as Vanessa; he'll never have to angle as a prostitute, or look easy, or weak. On top of calculating every word and every gesture thrown at a potential target, she has to calculate every single movement not just for showmanship and deadliness but also sex appeal and feminity. She has to be dangerous and deadly but not threatening. Danya just has to look attractive, flirt and amp up his skills to prove that he's worthy of... whatever it is he is supposed to be doing without looking crazy or let anyone think he lacks versatility. At HEPA, he has to prove that he's the top dog worthy of Kadet leadership position and little else.

Venessa? She has to pretend that she doesn't know how to use a baton or a fire axe, and when Danya and Filipp finish showing off their arm bar defenses, she meets them by the workout area and asks Filipp to fetch her the heavier weights — without losing her overall aura of competence.

"You need a moment to yourself?" Filipp asks, making rare use of the art of verbal communication, and Danya wants to laugh at the joke — he really does, but he simply half-hums, half-groans with the air of an amused flair instead, eyeing up Venessa as he does so.

The thing is, though; it never ends. They can take small moments of genuine reprieve in lessons, sometimes. A foot tap under the table while they stare and chant the words of Battleship Potemkin and Doctor Zhivago, a glance across the dining room and a smile, maybe as they cross the courtyard where the cameras can't quite see. They are small gestures but they are genuine. Everything else, the flirty sparring matches and the lewd comments, the lustful stares — it's just one big reminder that they're training for something else.

It's a reminder that one day, Danya won't be making eyes at Vanessa while wishing that he had the courage to speak to her. It's preparation for the day when Danya will be making eyes at HYDRA's enemies while plotting their very demise.

 **››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹**

"Okay, this is what we've got so far." Bartos wanders into the briefing room with a folder in one hand and a water bottle in the other. She stills for a moment before making her way up to the front of the room; twisting her hand up and flipping the bottle up into the air over the large wooden table situated in the center of the floor. It lands, wobbles a little, but stays upright, and Bartos pumps her first before carrying on without further delay. "After nearly a year or so of investigations, we've got three cases of HYDRA activity in the province labeled as Severe Threats, and another labeled as Cause for Concern."

They're all severe, in Coulson's opinion. Anything involving HYDRA was. Looking down at the six or so folders spread across the table before him, he rubs the fingers of his prosthetic hand together in thought.

Volosovsk had the highest concentration of HYDRA in the entire continent, to the point that for every SHIELD agent, there were five HYDRA operatives, twenty-three support personnel, and God knows how many sympathizers. The fact that, up until Ultron, SHIELD had no idea that HYDRA was operating in Volosovsk at all did not help. By the time they could have done something legally, the damage had been more than done; to mount a military campaign in an already destroyed country would have been inexcusable and HYDRA would have simply mounted more support for their cause.

Now, at least, in the time between Ultron and Coulson's arrival, HYDRA had begun advancing on three fronts, of which SHIELD's contingent in the country knew of. Infantry Battalion VI had recently taken out a cell in Novomodarsk, an operation that led to the deaths of nine HYDRA agents and the arrest of another four or five (five, Coulson remembered — four now, after one managed to successfully commit suicide, but it had been five) operatives. Ordinarily, an operation as successful as this would have merited a flight to the US for distinction and awards, but the strike team had found something else, and that something was disturbing to the point of an immediate request for reinforcements and a block on all transfers.

"We've got HYDRA operating on a number of major fronts," Bartos explained from the head of the table. "The main operation they're running is the kidnapping of prisoners to use as cannon fodder for what we _think_ is illegal experimentation. The same deal we had with that girl who's currently on the run somewhere... that, Witch-or-whatever. We don't know if HYDRA is simply experimenting or they've cracked whatever it is they were doing initially and is now farming weapons, but we do know where they are doing it, and where they're shipping the people after." The Agent-Commander turns to the screen against the back wall and, with one hand gesture, moves the current image into the top corner and swipes some more information along. "The second major front is a Palladium refinery in the northernmost chunk of the province. We're not sure of the timeframe, but sometime in the last couple of months, HYDRA has completely taken over the facility after buying out the company who owned it. From what our intelligence suggests, they're taking advantage of the fact that the synthesis rate for Palladium is still, largely, abysmal and using the, uh, "additional" product for what we think is bomb-making."

Agent Albertyn was an expert tactical analyst and was sat a few inches away from Coulson, on his left. "We were alerted to an explosion on a cruise liner about a month or so ago." He explained to Coulson. "You saw the report, I think, at the time? It was classified as a freak accident but after taking a closer look at the details, I'm fairly certain it was the kind of bomb that you could make with Palladium and a number of other compounds — we can't know for certain, because the liner ultimately sank and all the evidence has been locked up tight by the Russian government, but my guess is HYDRA have been testing out the prototypes on smaller targets."

"So you think they'll be moving up to something bigger?" Coulson asked.

"I don't know what they'd actually target, truth be told; their scope is too wide to narrow down any specific marks but short of them just creating the devices for insurance, I'd say it's a certainty they'd use it on _something_ worth a bomb that cost thirty and a half million dollars."

Coulson raised his eyebrows.

Albertyn grimaced. "I'm no engineer, but on top of developing something called Breitrium, the device needs enough Palladium to act as a homogeneous catalyst to jumpstart a highly selective chemical transformation, which in turn detonates the Breitrium, which is the thing that goes boom — not the Palladium itself. It's the same stuff that's in our generator. It's less powerful than nuclear energy but there's no, uh, fallout if there's an accident. Literally. The stuff burns clean."

"Breitrium was developed by a SciTech student a number of years back. It's a safe guess to assume that HYDRA had enough sleeper agents at the Academy to rip off the research and figure out a number of other applications," Bartos explained.

"So on top of the highly costly compounds, the device needs a very specific detonation charge. The bomb needs to be custom made for the situation it'll be planted in, hypothetically. We've never seen a bomb like this in action." Albertyn finished off. "The rarity and overall cost of the device is worth the destructive capabilities, however. That, our guys can at least understand."

Coulson rubbed at his face. "And the last thing?"

Bartos and Albertyn shared a look.

"You... uh, might want to sit down for this part." The latter advised, and Coulson glanced once, meaningfully, at Bartos.

The commander sighed. "Last month, we received a call on a secure line that's _supposed_ to only be for our high-level contacts in the Russian military. The initial phone call isn't much, just a request to contact them through our Systemwave tech for a more secure connection, so we follow them up an hour or so later to find that this isn't someone in the Russian Armed Forces; it's one of our former Agents who left after the HYDRA-SHIELD war." Bartos turned, made a hand gesture, and a picture of a red-haired young man flashed onto the screen. "You'll know this guy. Yakov Aksakov was a former HYDRA infiltrator before the war. He defected and surrendered to us before he could carry out any meaningful work on behalf of his little overlords; after some investigation, he was identified as being one of the first victims of that... HYDRA brainwashing voodoo, the thing with the codewords. After some therapy with Dr. Mikaelsen, it was actually discovered to be some extensive behavioral conditioning that was unintentionally 'unlocked' by severe head trauma. Effectively, he knocked some sense into himself."

"After SHIELD fell," Albertyn continued on. "We had no legal right to contain Aksakov; we let him go and he went off the grid. After months of silence, he sent us a memo informing us that he was investigating something to do with HYDRA independently and that, if he found anything, he'd contact us on a secure line with the details on the condition that we did not interfere."

"Since we had no right to pull him in, and he'd rather work alone, we let him get on with it," Bartos explained. "Aksakov has... issues, but he's good at what he does. We figured he was going after someone related to his behavioral conditioning and we simply waited."

"Then Ultron and you and Mace and all that happened and he got lost in the shuffle," Albertyn grumbled.

Coulson looked at the photograph on the screen. Aksakov wasn't a bad looking man by any means, but there was a quiet intensity behind his expression that set Coulson on edge. "Let me guess. He's found something."

"Aksakov wasn't just a victim of brainwashing," Bartos explained. "He was the victim of a HYDRA institution in southeastern Volosovsk that trains children to be soldiers. Aksakov went back to HYDRA under the guise of having escaped from a SHIELD facility where he told them he was being held; he had the background knowledge from his time in rehabilitation to look convincing, I guess, because he's found himself a position teaching them. The kids, that is."

Albertyn shook his head. "Shocked him something serious, but he confirmed it; even managed to get some photographs, a location and several other tidbits of information including the full names the the people in charge. Turns out General Klokov of the Russian Army has some alternative professions under his belt; he's the one running the facility."

Albertyn threw over a file, a thin one, only a few pages long. Coulson opened it up to find several photographs of youngsters, some older, some younger, all of them wearing dark uniforms. Judging by the angle, the photographs had been taken in secret with a hidden camera. His stomach dropped.

"We've just got confirmation a few hours ago; turns out a boy named Diederich Marc is there with a number of other children. Aksakov tells us that the complete total is something like thirty-four minors, a dozen or so instructors and a large contingent of soldiers to keep the facility secure." Bartos looked up at Coulson again. "I poked around before you arrived; Marc hasn't been declared missing by his parents, but his sister phoned the police concerned that Marc was going to be shipped off to some "European country" by some strangers claiming to be on behalf of a special school, and I just got the call twenty minutes ago; Marc's sister was found dead this morning after suspected OD."

"But get this," Albertyn sighed. "None of her college friends knew her as a drug abuser. She had no previous history of drug abuse."

Bartos reviewed the situation with a grim summary. "We ran the pictures through our system and four of them came back as missing person's reports. AMBER alerts. On top of those, we have three murders under investigation, fourteen house fires, and six car crashes that have killed a total of forty-three people. HYDRA's been profiling and kidnapping children and killing their families to tidy up loose ends, and if Aksakov is any indication, they've been doing it for nearly ten years."

 **››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹**

On the other side of the province, Yakov Aksakov was reeling.

At HEPA, the number and consistency of adults frequently changed. Throughout a Kadet's career, he could expect at two have two different handlers and to change teachers every year or so. They told the Kadets that it was to give them the very best advantages when it came to their education, but in reality, the reason was far harsher. The reason why the teachers changed so much was because, ultimately, most trainers got soft as the Kadets grew on them, and once they were suspected to have ulterior motives other than a Kadet's training, their proficiency could not be relied upon and they were _dealt with_.

Some were reassigned, others were killed. Klokov himself washed his hands of the situation by claiming that it was a fair price to pay for a future of HYDRA free from weakness, from softness.

What it meant was, despite being new and untrustworthy as far as his background was concerned, Yakov Aksakov had been made responsible for teaching Russian literature, boy's boxing and Krav Maga — and the care of three older boys, despite having only been at HEPA for four weeks.

Naturally, he felt wasn't a great overall teacher. He was fairly decent in the ring, of course, and his knowledge of martial arts was extensive but the lingering effects of "program failure" made him prone to emotional breakdowns and depressive spells. Nor HYDRA nor HEPA knew that, but Yasha felt like a ticking time bomb; surely it was only a matter of time before _someone_ realized that he had previously defected. They knew he was a graduate. They knew he'd been infiltrating SHIELD at the time of its fall. Granted, he suspected that Kolkov was too prideful of the program to even admit to himself that Yasha could possibly have suffered program failure, but with everyone else, men like Kusok and Malikov, he felt like he was living on borrowed time. Like one of them was going to turn around and out him as a double agent

As he walked into his classroom for last period, which he had with most of the older Kadets and those others proficient at Russian, it took more discipline than usual to look up at the red star painted on the wall next to his chalkboard without spitting at it.

"Attention!" One of the boys shouted and the nine students he had for this hour all stood up behind their desks. Two of the students were his; Daniil and the new boy, Diderich. Filipp, his other boy, no longer needed extensive lessons in Russian and his timetable was adjusted to accommodate more combat training. The rest of them were a mishmash.

Folder under one arm, he stood at the front of the class as they all saluted and shouted their usual greeting. "Good, take a seat." He replied, in Russian, and set his own things down as the Kadets started taking out pens and notebooks. Once their attention was turned back to him, he nodded. "Today we're going to continue with our work from yesterday on the products of so-called dreamers and philosophers and their effect on HYDRA's True Purpose. You are going to write an essay with the notes you have so far titled "Salvation not in mysticism, but in the successes of civilization". I'd suggest Polevoy's _History of the Russian Peopl_ e for your founding argument." He glanced at the clock. "After that, we'll have conducted this segment and will begin work on the publication of the work, _Doctor Zhivago_. You have half an hour."

Sucking in a breath, Yakov glanced out the window and gauged the distance between him and his desk, sat down gingerly and pressed both fingers up against the notebook he'd left from last period.

The quiet shuffling of papers and pen was usually enough to calm him, but today had brought unexpected challenges. After his initial induction into HEPA as a trainer, Yakov had immediately alerted the commanding officer in charge of the local SHIELD Battalion. At first, things had been promising; SHIELD had looked into what was going on and they had congratulated him in his efforts, but now he'd informed that the Field Commander himself had arrived in person and that, at some point in the next day or so, he'd have to peel away for an evening for a face to face meeting to go over what to do next.

Yakov wasn't stupid — he knows he couldn't be trusted, that he shouldn't be. That he was HYDRA, or, had been. Of course, he'd have to meet with them in person to give more information; even if to ensure that they had all the details before doing... something than just legitimatizing his competence and moral standing. He more than anyone knows just how severe of a situation this is, but he can't expect to move mountains. It would take time. Resources. He knew that, _he did_.

But, as he looks up at Diederich, the new boy, to see him pale-faced and sweating, struggling to write a mere three paragraphs while the two boys on either side of him have finished three pages, Yakov can't help it.

They don't understand. They never will.

Yakov needs to get them out _now_.

 **››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹**

Throughout the entire history of SHIELD, the commanding rank within the Infantry Division had always been that of _General_. Coulson never understood it; he'd never been a military man but he knew that it felt back to front. The General of the Infantry Division was commanded by the Field Commander who was commanded in turn by the Director (well, ish — not so much now) and while Coulson had never understood it, he had to admit; the General looked like the General. That he couldn't object.

"It's a historical term more than anything," the man himself tells Coulson over coffee (or well, tea and coffee. The General's first words to Coulson in over three years were, and Coulson quotes: "Get that shit away from me" so they adapted as necessary) and he looks up at a series of photos ranging from black and white to a sort of yellow to muted greens and blues to a more high definition photo of himself. "The first General was General McCalmont. There's been two of us since then and I'm the fourth. Technically, we're all Generals. Takes a General to be a General, or that's the concept."

If Winston Bezuidenhout ( _Marcus Tatham_ , actually, now. Something about having to change names every couple of years to avoid the people in the tax office but, _Winston's fine_ ) held the rank previously than Coulson had never seen the paperwork. He'd seen _Tatham's_ work first hand, however, and he would never doubt that the man had the skill to lead the entire Infantry Divison. He was a man hard pressed to overtake, in terms of specialty. Over forty years with SHIELD and Tatham had never, not once, failed an operation; the soldiers under his direct command all held distinction. Bartos was one of these protégés, and that said enough.

But it wasn't just the effectiveness of the General that got people, got Coulson, _interested_. Agent-General Tatham had a long history, but whatever part of it Tatham allowed to be recorded was redacted to the point of it being pointless to even look up in the first place. Coulson could ask, but there's something about Tatham that just... it makes him uncomfortable.

Maybe it's because he's known Tatham for nearly thirty years and the man hasn't aged a day beyond forty-five — and that was when Coulson first met him. He's actually overtaken the General, by this point. Both in looks and in rank.

In an attempt to joke, Coulson asks him his secret.

"What can I say?" Tatham grumbles. "You've never seen me without my makeup on," the General stretched out behind his desk and both knees popped loudly, which made both men wince. "As for rank, _my boy_ , I think we both knew that'd happen eventually. You always were a pleaser."

Coulson laughs, but it's strained. He looks at Tatham and Tatham looks at him.

The man sighs.

"In Nazi Germany, there was something called _Lebensborn_." Tatham took a sip from his cup. "On top of the breeding children they thought racially valuable, Nazis started to kidnap kids from foreign countries, mostly from Yugoslavia and Poland. The larger amount of 'em ended up in work camps or killed, but the kids they did take? They were given new names and were taken to special centers where they were Germanized. Told to be proud to be part of Germany, that their parents were killed in allied air raids. It got to the point in the end of the war where there were around 200,000 kidnapped kids. A lot of them didn't make it back."

There was a moment of silence between them, a shared minute of anger and frustration. Coulson took a long sip of his own lukewarm coffee and Tatham ignored his. Instead, the man looked out the window. It was dark out. His office window looked out over illuminated trees from the nearby streetlamps.

"The worst part is, these kids? Some were later recruited by the Stasi as agents. Given false identities, they "escaped" to their home countries as adults to be reunited with their birth mothers, claiming places of war children and serving as spies." Tatham wrapped his fingers around his mug and shook his head. "We see it today with Islamic State too; these kids go through hell and high water to survive and you wanna help 'em, you do, but at the same time there's a one in five chance that they've got an explosive belt under that jacket their wearing and..." he shrugs. "If we do this, kiddo... Well, we're in for a real fucking fight. I've seen some of the evidence. That outpost in Volosovsk is well protected — even without the super radicalized kiddies protecting it. On top of that, it's what to do with 'em afterward. They bloody well can't stay there, but they can't exactly stay _here_. either."

"I need to see this... Yakov, first." Coulson noted. "Everything else..." He sighed. "It's a lot to take in at once. I need to think. We need to plan one step at a time."

Tatham nodded. "Of course. It's difficult for him to get out, but he tells us he'll be able to arrange something by the end of the week. Until then, there's also the rest of HYDRA to deal with." Suddenly, the mask of calm austere nearly broke and Tatham's fingers clenched with such force, Coulson flinched himself. "This marks year... nine for me. Battling HYDRA that is. Guess our work will never really end."

Coulson makes a chuffing noise under his breath, but it's not in amusement.

It's a noise of horror-laced agreement.

 **›››** **| HYENADA |** **‹‹‹**

Okay, firs things first: Winston Bezuidenhout is a character that I came to grips with during one of Alfinde's SYOCS (Priority Red if you're interested) and oh my god he's just amazing and handsome and lovely and just too good and he's _fucking done_ with the universe. I brought him in because I felt that, given the character, he'd make a good officer. There are a number of canon characters who'd also fit the bill, but I tend not to mess with canon characters any more than I necessarily need to. Tatham, as he's known now, makes Captian America look like toddler, the's that old, and he's had enough of HYDRA's shit.

As for the other characters, well, I'll let you decide.

Part one is mostly SHIELD-centric; we'll see all the Kadets at one point or another, but their area of story development won't really kickstart until they are rescued.

As for the person who gave me an anon review, I've got your character and I'm currently running through their information to see what I can do with them. I'll have to get rid of the review for now because It's clogging up my screen, but I have seen it, don't you worry.

For everyone else, hope you enjoy.  
And now I've got to go and do some real-life work, so. Fun.


	4. Part One, Chapter Three

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 **| PART ONE |**  
CHAPTER THREE  
 **›** **››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹** **‹**

Bright and early the next morning, the Core U12 group for Krav Maga were assembled in the combat hall, sat cross-legged on the floor in two rows of five.

All Kadets learned more than one martial art; to be able to defend and attack when one's weapons failed was a principle of combat training, and while the range of ability and the strengths of each student tailored their overall program, all Kadets learned Krav Maga. Its focus on real-world situations was paramount, and while most people could expect kids to learn some beginner level Kung Fu or Taekwondo, they never expected Krav Maga or, for those especially gifted, KAPAP.

By this point, this class of largely ten to twelve-year-olds were just beginning to advance to G2 Level and today, they were working on higher-level clinches.

Aksakov typically attracted great engagement from his students, largely down to the fact that he was new and interesting, and far calmer and less prone to screaming fits than the former instructors. It made his lessons much easier to run. Most of his students listened intently to what he had to say.

And the other students...

"What did I tell you?!" Aksakov demanded of a pair of girls who had started off in a pre-lesson spar and ended up screaming at each other and breaking out into an awkward ball of flailing limbs and nails. It would have been humorous, maybe, if these children were normal; but they weren't, and Aksakov's amusement at the situation was completely flattened with the foreknowledge that these girls could kill a grown man three times their size. A risky grab managed to separate them both; Aksakov seized hold of Nastya's collar and flung her back just in time to send out his other hand to shove Flora away in the opposite direction.

The other students of his class all stood and watched, having been distracted from their own individual fights. Across the room, Janek was so alarmed at the sudden screaming that he forgot to block Ioannes' half-roundhouse and suffered a hefty smack to the face for his trouble. Saveli laughed.

"Fall in!" Aksakov barked, and because authority cannot be disobeyed, both girls stood in front of him smartly and refrained from resuming in their initial intentions to murder the other, even if they did scowl profoundly at him to make up for it. All the other children ran over to fall in also. Ten people simply whern't enough to make three lines, as was their usual pattern, but they improvised accordingly.

Aksakov sighed.

The fighting was a recurring problem with this class. Or, rather, these two girls in particular, and their fighting, was the recurring problem with this class.

Most of the other kids were fine to teach. Anatoli was a powerful little thing with a desire to learn that made him tolerable. Sonya was not much dissimilar; held behind initially due to difficulties dealing with the more ideological matters of the higher-end of the program, she had grown competent enough over the past couple of weeks and needed little instruction. Alonya wanted to please and was, therefore, a breeze to teach. She'd easily pass before the year was out. Saveli, meanwhile, was quite frankly creepy but at least he listened — if with _too_ much enthusiasm. Ioannes, the youngest, was difficult in the sense that it was hard to keep him in the same room (Aksakov nearly had a heart attack the first lesson when he turned around during arm-bars to find that the seven-year-old had gone missing) but his exceptional grasp of martial arts was impressive to witness, and so long as Aksakov remembered to check if he was still there every five minutes or so, all went well. Janek, while preferring Aksakov's boxing lessons, was equally competent and going places.

Flora and Nastya meanwhile...

Nastya was a brilliant martial artist, in some ways. Her early introduction to street fighting had given her a leg up, but there was one big, big problem. Her reliance on shielding abilities, which so far confounded Aksakov, meant that she suffered no pain, no physical limitation in terms of injury during matches. Aksakov understood her concern, but it also meant that she had no real gauge as to her true limitations. He couldn't reliably pit her against some of the other Kadets — not without them going to extremely dangerous levels to try and get past her abilities, which in turn pissed off them off, quite frankly, and led to them refusing to spar with her, having all found their own preferred partners. The concept of a "fair fight" was lost on these children, true, but that didn't mean that they got annoyed when they were forced to put in effort with no achievable results, no conceivable reward other than winning.

Flora, meanwhile, was one of the only students he could pair her with, because Flora too had pissed off the other students and found herself without a reliable pick of willing partners. Her drive, ego and general discontent with her peers had made her into an outcast (there were a few outcasts in the group, he knew, some of them have done so willingly, but very few of them went out of their way to separate themselves) and after several accidents involving broken bones and too many close calls, Aksakov had been forced to keep her in line, for Flora, a G1 level practitioner, saw no problem in challenging Filipp, NEPA's resident E3 level combatant (and Aksakov — who devoted his whole life to Krav Maga, was only E4) to a full on fight. Flora had issues with her pride and while she could handily beat most of her agemates, she was lacking in a sincerity — Kadets were encouraged to be Comrades; not friends, but it went without saying that the more personable Kadets had it easier. Danya and Cyrek were perfect examples.

In the end, despite attempts to prevent it, all he ended up with, every day, was Flora screaming at Nastya for being a weak and Nastya flinging some pretty dirty rhetoric back, which then advanced into a full on fight, in which they would then have to be separated.

So Aksakov called them all in and sat them down in their two rows of five again and decided to advance the lesson onto their clinches. He was too tired to try, and fail, to convince Nastya to lower her shields and he was too tired, to fail, to find someone else on their skill level. So he simply moved on.

These children might be near geniuses, have abilities that surpass most adults, but they were still kids. They got distracted with new, interesting things just as any kid might. Nastya and Flora put their differences aside to pay more direct attention to Aksakov once he pulled out his mouth guard. New information and the promise of learning caught their attention and diverted it from their current issues to concentrate on a newer more exciting matters.

"We will focus primarily on the crown-of-the-head and rear clinches," he told the class. "They are a good way to gain great control over your opponent. These clinches provide the option of strikes and takedowns into superior groundfighting positions. You lot already know the symmetrical clinch — today we will be learning something a little more advanced."

Aksakov demonstrated a move that applied severe torquing pressure on the neck, known as a neck crank. He indicated for another trainer, some young HYDRA fanatic who still couldn't shave, to face him off and settle into being held in Aksakov's clinch position after they both prepared by slipping in their respective mouthguards.

The former held the trainer's head until he was sure that he had all of the Kadet's attention, and then changed grip suddenly by clasping one hand with the other as though he was wringing his hands. Suddenly, Aksakov's forearms made contact with the trainer's neck, and he used his upper forearm to twist the neck of his opponent and pull the side of the trainer's face to his chest. He then completed the move with a 180-degree circle step, known as a tsai-bak, and squeezed elbows together, forcing one of his forearms slightly ahead of the other to make the trainer's head fall into an awkward angle. For further effect, Aksakov then yanked the younger man's head sharply and forced him into takedown, using all of his body weight to torque the poor bastard down by the neck.

When Aksakov let the man go, the younger man choked weakly and struggled back up to his feet. Aksakov turned back to his students, once he was sure that he hadn't damaged the boy too badly, and spat out his mouthguard.

"Another option is simply to snap the opponent's head forward while stepping back with your front leg for added torque and power." He explained. "If you master this quickly, I'll teach it to you. Any questions?"

All the Kadets threw their hands up.

Despite himself, Aksakov smiled.

 **›** **››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹** **‹**

At this exact moment in time, Coulson wandered into the main hall for a very late breakfast.

Camp Sebastian's hall-turned-canteen was a rustic wooden affair with high ceilings and large windows. The morning light nearly blinded him when he opened the door, and it took a moment of frantic blinking until he picked out the lone figure of Bartos sat three tables in.

"Sit," Bartos grunted when Coulson neared. The commander was sat with both legs drawn up, using the fine edge of a trench knife to cut into the table in front of her, surrounded by two empty plates and one bowl. Coulson took one look at the carving, decided that he couldn't decipher it, and elected to ignore it.

"Giving me orders now, Commander?" He shot back, instead of asking. Bartos rolled her eyes and kicked at the chair directly opposite her in wordless reply. Coulson sat down. "Good morning to you too, by the way."

"Dobré ráno, and it is simply to save you embarrassment." She flicked her hand, which was holding the knife, at a nearby server who was wandering over with a tray full of dishes. "Food comes to you. It's custom. No real choice here so you sit and they deliver."

Bartos wasn't joking; Sokovia was fraught with food shortages as it was, and as a result, Camp Sebastian was suffering in terms of variety. Breakfast was hearty and plentiful but it's selection of rice kasha with milk, omelet, Blini pancakes, bread, and tea was the only real option aside from canned soup. Bartos explained the kasha, stole two of his three pancakes and exchanged it for a doughnut, a side which ran out at about twenty minutes past eight along with coffee, a deadline Coulson had since missed, and continued on her quest of carving based vandalism with determination. The server took away the used dishes and gave Bartos another cup of tea.

As Coulson ate, Bartos explained a few things that hadn't come up on his morning report.

"Got a call from You Know Who," not looking up from her handiwork, she ripped off a chunk of pancake, popped it into her and swallowed practically in one single movement. "He's created an alibi for himself; something about a girl in town. He'll go out tonight at eight once his kids are bunkered down and meet with us then. He's been making a point to leave every few nights to make a routine, and he says he's no longer being followed. Just in case, though, we need to get to the location before he does. I've had a transcript sent up to your room."

"And?" Coulson sensed that Bartos wasn't finished. She grimaced.

"He sounded nervous. So I assume he has news, bad news."

"I'd be nervous if I was in his situation," Coulson noted, and Bartos shrugged in agreement.

"Point to you."

Coulson fought back the urge to run back to his room and look over the new evidence. He could easily sit in his room and work all day. He'd spent most of the night before doing just that until it got too cold, but he'd determined a while back that sitting there for hours upon hours looking over evidence was only useful once or twice. He wasn't a young man anymore, and on top of the physical proof, the neck and shoulder pains brought on from stooping over a desk for too many hours, he had been admonished by May (who, admittedly, would know) that sitting there re-reading and re-analysing data did him no favors. It's one of the reasons that he finally peeled himself away.

That, and the email from May herself which was currently sitting on his laptop. Coulson already had his reply; he'd written it as soon as he saw it, but he had told himself to wait. Ever since he'd left the country he'd been jumping at any and all excuses to phone her, email her, talk to her, and he was starting to feel like he was pining. And _not_ in a good way.

"Well you two look cheery," Agent-General Tatham came up from behind Coulson and sat down heavily beside Bartos. Dressed in the typical unarmoured fatigues of the Infantry, he reached out to take the knife off of Bartos and, once the knife was disposed of by carelessly tossing it to the other side of the empty room, turned and took the as of yet untouched mug of tea and downed half of it in one go. "I do hope, Commander, that you've briefed the sort-of-Director."

"The sort-of-Director has been briefed," Bartos blinked at her now empty hand and frowned.

"Cutting it a bit fine, aren't you?" Coulson asked with a deliberate glance toward the server.

"Nah," he-who-was-formally-Winston drunk the rest of Bartos' tea and shook his head. "I have mine in my room. Perks of rank, I suppose."

Coulson decided to get to business. "I'm up to date on our intel," he addressed the pair of them. "What time will we be meeting with..." he looked at Bartos. "You Know Who?"

"He wants to meet at twenty-two-hundred," Bartos answered.

"The location?"

"A small hotel three clicks from the site itself. At least, that is what he told them — he wants to meet in the building next door, an abandoned building, a former apartment complex that is locked up and houses some of the local homeless population. The two buildings share a basement, and that's how he plans to get in. Room 201, three floors above where the usual houseguests all live. It should be safe providing we go in early and don't get seen."

"I sent Koba to scope the place out and he's informed us that we can use the fire escape to avoid the homeless population." The General leaned back and propped his foot up on his opposite leg. "Right now, it's just a matter of choosing personnel."

Coulson glanced at him. "You suspect any action?"

Tatham shook his head. "If what he says is true, if our... local opposition is no longer shadowing his every move, then we're safe to bring a small team of maybe four or five individuals. I won't be going because I have a meeting with the Actual-Director that I need to," a sigh. "Hype myself up for, but... Bartos?"

"More than willing," Bartos replied without looking up. "Koba is still there, keeping an eye on everything. He'll be there."

The general shrugged. "Then I suggest some backup for you, sir. Just in case."

"And as for the other instances of concern." Coulson sighed. "Obviously, the kidnapped minors are top priority, but I want to send in a strike team to recon' the refinery."

"I'll give you a list of my recommended personnel," Bartos replied. "I have six or so men who would jump at the chance."

 **›** **››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹** **‹**

Things had been getting tense for Flora recently. A Kadet's whole life was whittled down to training — if they weren't working on their weapons handling then they were running, or lifting weights, or working on their hand-to-hand, or learning how to survive in the wilderness, learning to drive, learning first aid, learning a fourth or fifth language — but there was still a hierarchy in terms of who sat where in the entire group. Flora had seen her file; she was nearly at the top of her age range and looking at the scores, she even beat some of the boys, but it wasn't just about the scores. Scores did not count when it came to who got what at dinner and who was last in line during Free Time.

She knows she's in trouble the afternoon after her most recent spat with Nastya when she's called away during group drills to face off fifteen-year-old Vanessa.

"You've gotten cocky," her handler, Comrade Orlov, tells her, and Flora folds her arms, trying to see if any of the others are watching. Sure enough, some of the older Kadets who all train together, Danya and Filipp, Raisa and Kachina, who had recently been bumped up a year, where stood off to one side having drifted off from acrobatics. She knows that this is a show; they're trying to make an example. "Time to show us how much you can back it up. No powers; only muscle."

Flora spits. Guess Aksakov ratted her out, again. She feels her eye twitch and tries not to immediately throw herself into a stance.

The fact that Vanessa is currently the best girl in NEPA hurts a little, but there's also something that feels like pride flowing through her veins. Vanessa is beautiful, the most beautiful Kadet Flora has ever seen, but with a smile that hides pain and blood and knives behind it, and a twisting hatred starts up in Flora's gut, especially when the trainer leans in and says something to the other girl, quiet enough that Flora isn't meant to hear. Years of straining to hear her the trainers, however, has given her an edge. She hears her handler say, "Take her down a peg," and the indignation burns in her veins like acid. Flora deliberately sets her stance and Vanessa winks.

From the sidelines, Danya wolf-whistles. Comrade Orlov gives him a glare, but true to training, Danya takes a page out of Vanessa's book and winks at her, too. "Maybe we can go next, Comrade Orlov!"

"Twenty pushups for the mouth," the woman spits back.

Danya laughs and starts doing just that.

She knows she's going to lose the fight by simple virtue of age; Flora had lost the second she stood up to Vanessa, and the fact that she is angry doesn't help matters. Vanessa is calm, focused and secure in her position. As long as she doesn't get herself beheaded she's a sure thing for passing the test and graduating, whereas Flora still has four more years of scrapping and killing and proving herself. It's also worse because the girl is playing with her. Flora fights as hard as she can — no point in holding back even though she knows she should try to save a bit of dignity — but she's still losing, and each hold is a second too long, each blow a little harder than necessary. The girl is making an example of Flora like she's a trainer bringing down an uppity newbie, with everyone watching.

If this wasn't a no power's match, Flora would want nothing more than to scream at Vanessa and knock her straight onto her back, but Flora also knows that while it might be easier — the trainer told her no power's for a reason. If Flora can't control herself and follow orders, then it doesn't matter how skilled she is. Plenty of skilled kids have been kicked out before graduation.

But it _is_ a Non-Power match, and soon, Flora is choking on her own blood, and she knows without having to check that she'll be going to the infirmary to get her nose set later. Finally, Flora is on her back, shoulders pressed hard enough to the mats that her back aches, and the girl sits above her, expression nonchalant, not even breathing hard.

She shouldn't do it. She should take the loss in good spirit because showmanship is almost as important as winning, but as Lyme struggles to breathe through the blood in her throat and the misplaced bones in her nose, looking up through swollen cheekbones at the picture-perfect Vanessa above her, something snaps. The girl sits back and offers Flora a hand up, and Flora sucks in a breath and spits a mouthful of blood and saliva right in her face.

If nothing else, Flora will cherish the wide-eyed look of disgust that crosses the girl's pretty face until the day she dies.

"Flora," Orlov shouts, and that's a flat disappointed voice and she knows she deserved it. "Suck it up. You're a Kadet, not a first grader."

The girl stands without offering to help again, and she laughs — the sound digs into Flora's bones like a rusty blade — and swipes her fingers across her cheekbones, turning Flora's insult into a smear of war paint. "Good match," she says and winks, and wanders over to where Danya is stood. With a grin, he wipes her cheekbone and nose with the cuff of his sweatshirt, before admiring his handiwork and turning to sneer at Flora.

Flora hauls herself to her feet and wipes her mouth. Again she should be quiet, again she should return the gesture and shake hands, but she's humiliated now. "Pretty-ass bitch," she spits out.

The girl snorts and turns around. "This pretty-ass bitch just kicked yours," she says, and tosses Flora a jaunty wave as she sets off with the group of over thirteens back to their original lesson. "Try harder next time."

They fix her nose and make her suck on ice chips to soothe her bruised throat in the infirmary, and Flora never stays there a second longer than she absolutely has to but she does today, curled up at the end of the bed with her head resting on her knees. She'd rather stick her hand into a vat of acid than do that again, feel the whole room laughing at her, and know that if this was the real world, she'd be flat out dead.

"Why are you here?" She asks Aksakov when he sits at the foot of her bed. "You're not my handler."

"You know why I had to ask them to do that," he says, and none of the trainers are soft but some of them do pull their punches a little. "You're right, I'm not your handler, but I'm the one responsible for teaching you how to fight — and I can't teach you if you're dead. HYDRA is a master that must be served, and while death to it's service is the ultimate honor, we would rather you die to your enemies than a childhood comrade." He looks across the room; never at Flora's face. "You can't be thinking you're better than the others just because you're smarter or faster. You try that out in the real world and you're likely to get killed without achieving anything."

Flora shrugs and doesn't look up.

"She's also three years older than you," Aksakov points out. "She's a fully qualified combatant with years of experience and the training to back it up, you'd never beat her under those circumstances, so stop crying and come back out like the Kadet you are instead of the amateur you're not."

Flora grimaces. "It's just — I have to be the best." She looks at him. "Nastya refuses to comply so I must up my game. Why can't I up my game?"

"You can up your game all you want," Aksakov notes. "Just don't get over your head. Pride kills. That is where you went wrong."

Flora sighs and pokes at her nose, using the twinge of pain to ground her. "Yes, Comrade Aksakov."

"Good." Aksakov leans over and claps her shoulder. "Up. Do some laps, hit the range, then come back in for dinner. Your handler will want a word afterward, I imagine."

Then, a moment of hesitation.

"And don't be all sore thinking that Nastya has gotten off free, Kadet." He looks at her, seriously. "HYDRA punishes disobedience most severely. You know that."

 **›››** **| HYENADA |** **‹‹‹**

Okay shorter chapter today because I literally just watched the latest episode of AoS and now I NEED to write something about Director Mace.

KAPAP, or Krav Panim el Panim (lit. face to face combat) is Krav Maga on steroids. I imagine that Krav Maga is at a good difficulty level for most of the Kadets at a standard level; real expertise can take up to twenty, thirty years (I myself have been learning since I was six and now, fourteen years later, I've reached the level of P5 by attending sessions five times a week, forty-seven weeks a year) and for super kiddies who are at the top 3% of the fastest, smartest and strongest candidates in the world, acceleration would be _increased_ but not too insane. People like Aksakov, who have spent their lives committed to this fighting style, would beat any kid handily even without the additional size and weight advantage — KAPAP, therefore, is for Kadets like Filipp, who are pretty much already adult sized and master-level combatants.

As for the whole disobedience thing. I mentioned this in a different post I made awhile back on my Livejournal, but HYDRA doesn't want children who are prone to disobedience. Like, at all. I've copied and pasted some of my argument down below, but long story short:

HYDRA has one big problem in that their ideological power foundation is... flawed. It's spread across the globe and as a result, subject to interpretation. You have the 'merican strand of HYDRA, the SHIELD strand of HYDRA, the Sokovian strand of HYDRA, the German strand of HYDRA, the Soviet strand of HYDRA, the Russian stand of HYDRA, and you also find them in China, in Africa, in England. Then there's H.A.M.M.E.R., and the Secret Empire, and A.I.M. and the Typhon Group and Echidna Capital Management. The fact that HYDRA are stuck in an endless loop of: "FIGHT! SHIT! RETREAT! CUT OFF ONE HEEEAADD AND TWWOO MOOOORE! FIGHT! SHIT! RETREAT! CUT OFF ONE HEA-" makes their identity issue _worse_ because both sides become more and more blurred and ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? until nobody really knows _what_ it is they're fighting; only that they call themselves HYDRA, even though their intentions are not to bring back Hive _exactly_ but rather something along the lines of WE'RE GONNA TAKE OVER THE WORLD™ 2.0, _modern edition_.

So, how does HYDRA solve this little issue?

Simple. It becomes a single, present entity that can contend effectively.

In other words; it becomes _legitimate_. Only when it comes legitimate, singular ideology in which can be adequately opposed can the thesis and antithesis create a synthesis.

And HYDRA, really, only has one option. It has to grow from one single point, and continue to educate, expand, and develop from there. (Red Skull does this, eventually, but that's the comics and he hasn't shown up in the MCU lately yet soooo...)

This is where HEPA-Volosovsk comes in. In order to have that, it needs a system in which can indoctrinate "true" believers who cannot, and will not, disobey. HYDRA will use anything and everything to get leverage, but most of these children have no families; no real friends aside from their classmates (and maybe not even then) so unless HYDRA has something else over them, they are down to what I call "Base Zero" or, quite frankly, a Kadet's own life.

And if they keep on acting out after that... well, then they simply don't. HYDRA wants a future, and it can't create one on loose ideology. HEPA is a small contained population; if someone gets infected, they need to be removed before the infection spreads, at any cost, because the collective mission is worth more than the single individual.

...

The end.

You can look away now.

...

For those who have nothing better to do than read my nonsensical rants, Here: the FULL (actually it's about 1/3 of my full argument but the full thing is like 10,00000000.4 words so... No.) bit of the above argument. Enjoy.

• ** HYENADA PRESENTS: **• **  
** **HYDRA SCHOOL, FOR EVERY LITTLE AUTHORITARIAN'S EDUCATIONAL NEEDS**

 **››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹**

HEPA: The HYDRA Educational Political Academy. It's a forced acronym to legitimize HYDRA's warped view of education, but it works, because now there is a name and it's something to attach oneself to. "I'm a HEPA graduate, I'm HYDRA Elite!" said the dangerous looking person. It is the starting point of an identity.

In my CaAU (Canon Assisted AU) there is more than one HEPA. Depending on where the current MCU goes, I'll have world-built at least four/three separate sites in separate areas, but for now, we'll stick with HEPA-Volosovsk.

 **PART ONE:** BACKGROUND, RATIONALE, AND FUCKING HELL NO WONDER HYDRA KEEPS ON FAILING

(Or; the Power Vs. Control argument.)

One thing that really annoys me about the MCU universe is that everyone sort of expects HYDRA to _want_ to train unstable, highly dangerous people.

The thing is, in order to have an effective system, one has to surround oneself with people who are weaker or less capable than oneself, at least that's the easy way.

The second the subject becomes more powerful than the principle, something is going to go wrong.

Quite frankly, it's not in the "spirit" of HYDRA. At the end of the day, HYDRA is _AAALLLL_ about the idea of freedom being a false doctrine. If a child becomes too powerful to be controlled? They'll get rid of it. Start again.

The whole idea of HEPA-Volosovsk from the get go is to prevent this idea of an individualist power base. Some people look at HYDRA and the first thing they tend to think is anarchy and bloodthirsty powered lunatics trying to destroy the world, indiscriminately training for violence and murder, uncontrollable beasts harming everything and everyone because they want to, all bordering on psychopathy if not already there. (*cough*Grant Ward*cough*) Does it work? Sure. But that isn't a foundation. It's a time bomb. It's a weapon. You can't build an army on that, you can't build an ideology, because it's set to collapse.

Here's a thing: The Black Widow is an incredibly talented combatant, very smart, very capable. Yet, she did not overpower her handler/controllers until adulthood. There had to be _something_ there. She's not HYDRA, she's Soviet, but the same blindness to everything else until she finally finds the self-knowledge is there.

HYDRA wants the former, not the latter. The first thing they want to hear is when they ask "who are you?" is simply "HYDRA!"

So, in order to have a foundation, one has to start with good stock and good training, to bring out the good traits and iron out the bad. Using brainwashing instead of force makes your stock cooperate because they do better if they want to be there. Anarchy doesn't work. At least, not in a system that needs stability in order to thrive. Kadets in HEPA-Volosovsk, therefore, would be favored if they are loyal and blind, obedient. Power isn't so much of the draw as obedience is. HYDRA _is_ powerful. Hell, anyone who is so blind to the contrary that they can look upon real evidence and just shake their head and deny it, so brainwashed and conditioned to physically fight against anything that doesn't sit their purview, is powerful.

HYDRA, especially here, is not interested in power. **Yet.** It is interested in the means of _obtaining_ power.

And training someone who is powerful for ten odd years, who will likely end up too high on bloodlust to obey and may end up turning just as easily on HYDRA as they would their enemies is a big NO GO.

HYDRA, especially here, does not want genuine psychopaths and individualists. Those people are uncontrollable and have no rules. They want people who are easily led and easily controlled.

And when little Mary Sue decides that she is so so powerful that she doesn't need to listen to HYDRA anymore? Well, little Mary Sue would never have got that far because Mary Sue was given a lethal injection the second she even showed _signs_ of being a lost cause and swiftly removed from the premises in case she infects the rest of the stock with her self-idealism and individuality. It doesn't matter, really, how powerful someone is. If they're a problem, they'll be dealt with.

Genetic cloning and, hell, LMD's means that there is less stress put on a need for the "real thing". They might not be perfect (Ie, the Winer Soldiers vs. Captain America) but if you get it right, you get the obedience and the power in one.

HYDRA _does_ want powered people, of course. Powered people are nine times out of ten more powerful than regular people, but that doesn't mean they're special.

It just means they're more effective.

HYDRA wants to control it's Kadets, and will do so by any means necessary. The second they can't be controlled they will simply outlive their prospective usefulness. HYDRA can't risk a highly powerful, highly trained Kadet turning around and fighting back. They _won't _ risk it.

Think of it as a mindlessly cruel, horrific, and generally disgusting but really effective insurance policy.

...

and with that holy mother of god it's half twelve,  
hope y'all enjoy.

Guten Abend!


	5. Part One, Chapter Four

.

 **| PART ONE |**  
CHAPTER FOUR  
 **›››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹‹**

"They call it a talent blocker. Initial testing on our subjects at Istokamen Prison have yielded positive results."

Dr. Lengyel Csaba reminded Aksakov of a prowling little jackal. Slanted yellow eyes and too many teeth with a head of white curly hair almost fully covers a bony, frowning face. At the man's instance, he picks up the small device and holds it against one finger.

"And you are telling me, that it can... stop them, safely."

Aksakov has to be careful with the eggheads. On one hand, a healthy dose of dubiousness can spur them on to divulge; but the difference between healthy suspicion and downright concern was a hard balance for him to make. He tries to hide it, cover it behind a mask of indifference and skepticism, but he half expects Csaba to turn around and demand to know why he feels so strongly about it, of what could possibly be more important than aching the True Purpose. Why he wants his kadets to be safe over obedient.

Dr. Irina Nalepa was much more agreeable, and her forced indifference towards their young subjects makes her more easy to approach and to deal with. "The results indeed appear to suggest that, Comrade, yes."

He knew that this was coming, of course. General Klokov had brought them forward as the means to finally, completely, control their Kadets to the final degree and had been talking about them animatedly for the past few weeks. Some of the other trainers were okay with them; had already suggested a number of Kadets to go forward for the procedure first. Aksakov had simply agreed to tow the party line.

But he was nervous.

The device was small; it sat smugly in the center of his index finger and felt completely weightless, as thin as paper if not as flexible.

According to Csaba, the general idea was to use the device along with a socket, both implanted in the area of the brain largely responsible for the control of mind-centric powers and abilities. The science was admittedly lost on Aksakov, but from what he could understand, there was an area of the brain among Inhumans and some others that was largely responsible and could be highjacked; for some others who had permanent... enhancements on a physical, constant level, it was not the same, but those with powers that could be controlled with the mind...

This device would limit their ability to do so.

On the command of a remote controller. Aksakov had seen it; it was a small handheld device. He was to be issued with one as soon as most of the Kadets were fitted.

Aksakov had seen it; it was a small handheld device. He was to be issued with one as soon as most of the Kadets were fitted.

Fortunately, Aksakov had no Kadets under his direct responsibility with powers that fit into this criteria. Filipp was enhanced but not from an Inhuman point of view; he was genetically superior and jacked up on an early course of steroids. Danya was talented but he was baseline human. Diederich meanwhile was powered but from what HYDRA could tell, it was neither Inhuman or controllable from a third party.

Katya Orlov, meanwhile, the trainer who taught reconnaissance and subterfuge with another fellow by the name of Henrich Baník, was responsible for Raisa and Flora and Nastya and _she_ was supremely excited to move on with proceedings. Alec Malikov, who had the under 10 girls and Emil Kusok who handled the under 10 boys were also ready and waiting to get their powered Kadets fitted. It was a decision that was easy for them to take. Aksakov was relieved that he wouldn't need to, because he was certain he would have hesitated.

"How many units so far?" He asks the doctor, and in reply, the man turns to a dozen or so boxes.

"More than enough for several generations!" Dr. Csaba laughs. "A true marvel of engineering!"

And while the man inside Aksakov managed to suppress the squirm, the agent inside him simultaneously managed to slip the device inside the hem of his sweatshirt. When Casba looked back in his direction, Aksakov was subdued, complacent, and he blinked at the man in return.

"I see," Aksakov replied diplomatically. "Then I guess I shall await the first participant."

From beyond his shoulder, Orlov walked by and gave him an unreadable look.

"Have Filipp kitted up tomorrow morning," she instructs. "I want him to... lead the demonstration. Have him report to the men."

It's not hard to understand what she means by _that_. Over the past year, they had used Filipp in a number of 'demonstrations' which are intended to 'encourage' the more timid Kadets, and 'subdue' the too confident. From beating them down to chasing them down and dragging them through the strip of forest outside during the night; these incidents were quick and unexpected, and they worked because while instructors were expected to put the children through their paces, the Kadets never expected it from one of their own. Filipp wasn't always chosen; sometimes it was Danya, sometimes it was Vanessa. They've even brought in kids like Sonya. Whichever works.

Aksakov swallows and nods.

And makes a mental reminder to shake the nearest SHIELD agent and demand as to what is taking them so long.

 **›››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹‹**

With everything in place, the only thing Coulson had left to do was wait. Waiting, however, wasn't exactly a single moment; it was a broad spectrum of activities that dragged on from the early hours of the evening up until mid afternoon. After scoffing a fairly edible meal of pirozhki and beef stroganoff, finishing what remained of his paperwork and taking a brisk run around the compound — he was accosted by a young tactical agent, blonde and broad with a face that had, judging by the small knicks Coulson could spy from his current distance, recently suffered an inexperienced shave.

"Excuse me, sir." The trooper approached Coulson and stood to attention. "The General wishes to see you in Gym 5B."

Rightly, Tatham had no right; " _Wishes to see you_ " was an interpretation shy of an order, but Coulson was used to it. Years of missions involving the infantry had instructed him in the splendid art of _not taking it personally_. Infantry, and to some degree, Tactical, may follow your orders; they may shoot on command and follow your lead, but the actual command still sat with the infantry officer in charge. Coulson had since learned how to take a step back and let someone else call the shots; it was offensive, quite frankly, and very insulting, to take orders from a Suit. Agent Hand, he remembers, had been one of those agents who refused to respect the status quo. The Troopers may have followed her orders impeccably, but it still stung; you wouldn't find any of those surviving men and women grieving over her. Grant Ward had been their enemy in the sense that they had killed a fellow SHIELD Agent; but they had never really cared for Hand, personally.

The fact that Hand had found them expendable in turn had only made matters more antagonistic. Coulson, however, had no need to command Infantry directly. As a result he was far more liked, more tolerated.

Commanding the Infantry was Tatham's gig.

"Gym 5B?" Coulson repeated. "That's the one near the pond, am I right?"

Despite him having been convinced that it wasn't any more possible, the trooper managed to stand even straighter. "Yessir."

Coulson nodded, easy. "I'll head off there now. Thank you Agent."

Nice and polite; no dismissal, no seize of power. The trooper saluted and stepped off down a nearby path, job done, and Coulson made his own way across the walled-in compound to Gym 5B.

There were three "gyms" in Camp Sebastian. One was a prefab half built into the ground and another was a repurposed hall. The third, Gym 5B was one of the warmest rooms, being only one floor down from the generator itself. Coulson had a soft spot for it, with its mahogany wall clock permanently stuck at a quarter to five, dim light bulbs suspended from long wires and shrunken floorboards that creaked underfoot.

Before Tatham took command, Gym 5B was for hand to hand combat and martial arts. The room itself had always been split into two, with the front end dominated by a nearly seventy-year-old boxing ring from the Soviet era, but Tatham had found a new use for the other.

Coulson had no time to react; as soon as he rounded the boxing ring, he flinched when a high carbon steel blade flashed out from seemingly nowhere and stopped millimeters away from his throat.

"I've noticed a problem with the SHIELD Agents of today," Tatham lamented calmly; Coulson knew it was him from his voice, but he refrained from turning his head to actually look at the man. "Practically none of them can fully concentrate onto the global battlefield; they concentrate on the fight at hand with no mind to their surroundings." A sigh. "You have any idea, 'Squirt, how hard it is to train a fully-trained Agent in focusing exercises when they deem themselves already fully instructed? It's hard."

"I see," Coulson licked his bottom lip nervously. "A... lapse in their training, or...?"

Tatham laughed, and flung the sword away with a swish.

"There's no need to be nervous," he wandered into Coulson's line of sight. From the neck down, Tatham was dressed in a series of thick, black fabrics and dark body armor. He'd look strikingly medieval if it weren't for the bright, almost luminous sport company logo printed on his shoulders.

Coulson recognized it. Blue Rail was one of many front companies that provided SHIELD with their various protective and sporting equipment needs. Everything from Coulson's own gym gear to the body armor he slipped on before a mission was made by Blue Rail, and they had Mace to thank for it. Up until now, however, he never knew that they made fencing equipment. He knew some Agents practiced it; May was one of them, but, still.

You learn something new every day.

Actually, Coulson thought, make that _two_ things.

Tatham threw the blade at him, taking delight in Coulson's automatic flinch. "It's not real. Well, it is real, but it's designed for combat reenactment. You wouldn't use a sword like this in the same capacity during a real fight; the sword is made differently, weighs far more than a battle ready equivalent and isn't made to be sharpened. The only way I'd be able to hurt you with _that_ ," he smirked. "Was if I beat you with it. It's not sharp enough to actually cut you."

Coulson examined the blade. It was heavy, he noticed, and the blade was dulled. "Why have them at all, then?"

"I don't, usually." Once Tatham was sure Coulson had seen enough of it, he took the sword back and slid it into a black protective bag. "This was a gift." He gave Coulson a conspiratory sort of look over his shoulder. "No, the swords I use are... much more realistic, but don't worry, I'll stick to my synthetic and wooden models in your presence if you're worried about your safety."

"Why do I have the feeling that you're going to force some wisdom in global awareness on me." Coulson sighed.

Tatham shook his head. "Naw, not now. It's mostly for my little soldiers. They're the ones going in with rifles in live combat zones." He waved off to a set of uniform off to one side. "No, this is just some exercise. That circuit you run every morning and evening is boring; done it a thousand times, trust me, it's mindless cardio. We're going to do something much more fun. That there should be your size."

Coulson eyed the black set of equipment with a frown. "This is for me?" He looked back at Tatham, on the verge of surprise. "It's brand new."

"Think of it as a 'Happy Field Commandership' gift. From what I can imagine, I'm sure Agent May would be delighted to learn that you finally owned a set." He thought for a moment. "There used to be a tradition before Fury took full command. Top officers used to give each other gifts when they took up position. Not bullshit cards or cakes, but mementos of useful things. When I got promoted someone had a tech in RnD re-design a combat helmet to look more like a galea. You've seen it, it's on my desk. When Mace got the job, we waited until the Superbowl before getting him a signed helmet. Weaver got some... I don't actually know what it is, some science thing with the signatures of all her living SHIELD cadets on it. This? Think of this as a personal gift from me."

The Field Commander himself intensified his frown in Tatham's direction. "Is this why you insist on fighting with a sword in combat? I mean, I've seen it before, y'know, with Barton. It's not just a fad, is it?"

In reply, Tatham just grins.

 **›››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹‹**

Comrade Alec Malikov was one of those trainers responsible for training Kadets in 'ability management'. Usually, this delightful example of power conditioning was on a one-on-one basis and took up his entire day, but on Fridays and Saturdays, he had enough free time on his schedule to take all of the Over 12's for Rifle Exercise.

Weapon management was done with Comrade Emil Kusok, who had all the younger kids, teaching them the ins and outs of proper firearm use. Most Kadets knew how to use a firearm by the age of eight; they were expected to be able to kill another human at the age of nine, but frequent and repetitive training was the road to familiarity and expertise.

However, the Over Twelves this afternoon weren't pulling any triggers today. In fact, their standard issue Nikonov Assault Rifles were empty; their mags, removed.

Stood in three lines of four, the entire population of NEPA Kadets who were too old for their counterparts on the firing range stood rigid to attention in the facility's outdoor quad, short, spiky grass still half-frozen digging into their bare heels as they performed conditioning exercises with their rifles.

"One!" Comrade Malikov shouted, in Russian.

In response, the Kadets all snapped through a series of arm and body movements, starting by swinging their arms forward to the height of their shoulders, raising their right hand and lowering their left to front perpendicular. At same time, they bent with their trunk to the left. The whole movement took less than two seconds after extensive daily drilling. After performing the action, all of the Kadets shouted out as one, a single, loud battle cry.

"Two!"

Starting from the same movement, they performed the far longer drill, lunging sideward to the left and flexing their elbows to a thrust position, swinging their rifle muzzles backward low horizontally between their legs, keeping the rifle parral to the ground and just above their ankles. Once the moment was done, they recovered to starting position.

"Three!"

Swinging both arms forwards, the Kadets mutely squatted in a full knee bend, holding their rifles before them before recovering to first position.

On and on, up to Exercise 11; the Kadets ranged from lunging and turning to holding their file in the air and bending to squatting and bending to the step, lift and turn, to jumping jacks all the way to a stationary run on the spot for a rapid thirty seconds. The whole thing took them maybe five or six minutes; and that was only the First Drill Formation. There was another Two Formations and sixteen separate exercises to go.

Before they repeated the whole thing again, twice.

Compared to log exercises, the monotonous exercise powered my muscle memory was easy, in Raisa's opinion. So when Filipp was called off out of formation, she was surprised — to find that she was suprised.

As a general rule, Raisa kept her distance from her peers. She wasn't stupid; she knew what HYDRA was, to a degree. She had an angle on them, on what she was supposed to do, what they expected, and she remembered that it shouldn't sit right with her, even if it's foggy, half sunken in a chorus of propaganda and training. Her first priority was survival, and surely there was little good in these children who willingly — sometimes gleefully — did as they were instructed.

But then there was also that... _other_ part of Raisa, which had cropped up since the age of around twelve when Filipp first pinned her to the ground during a sparring match, and that traitorous element of her nature rose up from the same place deep inside where she buried it. She tries to correct herself the second she realises, but in that time, she's already glanced off to follow Filipp as he strides over to where Comrade Aksakov had called, and taken in the tight muscle around his shoulders, the lines of his caucasian bone structure that looked _off_ when he spoke with a pitch-perfect Russian accent. As soon as the heat rushes to her face Raisa has returned her gaze forward and mentally kicked herself. She promises that she'll give herself punishment laps later.

Of course, the nurse they reported to "woman's issues" had informed all the girls over the age of eleven that it was _okay_. Raisa was well used to the birth control and the increased vitamin intake, she was used to the facts in regards to becoming a woman, but there were some things even HYDRA couldn't prevent.

Kadets, after the age of thirteen, were deliberately trained in same-sex groups in most areas; only in mixed practice and during History and Language lessons did they integrate, on top of Free Time and meals, which was a mere three or four hours in a thirteen hour day. Raisa hadn't practiced in actual lessons with Filipp or any other boy since she was twelve, and NEPA did that deliberately because they were teenagers and HYDRA didn't want to take any additional chances. Acting was encouraged, of course; Vanessa and Danya have had this weird, fake-romance going on for nearly a year, but if a male Kadet was found in a female Kadet's room after lights out it was a sure way to get beaten, if not killed.

It was _normal_ , though, the nurse had stressed. Raisa had kept quiet and refuse to take heart because that nurse was, despite her promises, NEPA personnel who reported to their trainers; told them which Kadet cried while having their finger's set or stayed in stoic silence as their had their jaw reattached, so she had simply sat in grim silence. It wasn't normal, she thought, not for HYDRA. Not if she wanted to stay safe.

 _It's not normal_. She mentally repeated as she near-scowled at the treeline she could spy from over the top of the perimeter wall.

It wasn't normal, she thought again. It wasn't normal because Filipp was crazy. At least, that is what was the word. Filipp was the perfect image of the loyal HYDRA soldier, with a square jaw and blue eyes, the poster-boy, healthy and strong and already a man at fifteen; shaving and — a sign of imminent graduation — wearing the black trainer fatigues and not the white Kadet ones. He was HYDRA, yes. Through and through.

Until something in his mind snapped, when he looked off into the middle distance and suddenly convulsed into a manic rage that sent the nearest trainer scrambling for the tranquilizer. Until something in his mind snapped and he started shouting about an American _like-him-but-with-an-Ef_ and SHIELD and Men In Suits. When the Kadets got to watch American TV during their morality missions, they'd seen an advert for Captain America figures (they had those in the U12's dorm, for the little kids to play with; they used toy Russian soldiers to fight the bright red and blue monstrosity) and Filipp spent the next week and a half fighting off dreams about something to do with New York. It was hard to understand at the time; Filipp ended up getting drugged and he spent a good few days on a lighter schedule after his outburst until the episode seemed to pass.

Yet despite his faults, Filipp was going places. He listened intently to whatever Aksakov had to say before handing over his rifle and running off to the Trainer's office after a smart salute.

Aksakov returned the rifle to Malikov with a short explanation before he, too, disappeared.

"Okay, you lot!" Comrade Malikov snapped. "Rest time over! Formation Two! One! Go!"

 **›››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹‹**

Suffice to say, the rumors of Tatham being an incredibly gifted swordsman were all very much true, and this was, decidedly, not a fact aligned to Coulson's own benefit.

The Field Commander fell hard against a nearby wall with a clatter of plastic body armour, feeling the shock of impact vibrate up his neck and along his arms, pain muffled by the heavy padding having just scrambled wildly out of the way when Tatham disarmed him of his own practice sword (much to his relief, Tatham had insisted on practicing with wooden equipment, a kind of sword the General had introduced as a _Rudis_ ) after the General turned Coulson's blade out of his hand by sheer force of violent rotation. It was a move that left Coulson's wrist smarting and his sword flying off wildly in a different direction.

When he rebounded off the wall, Coulson was met with a violent jab to the stomach. It wasn't hard, but it caused Coulson to grunt in discomfort and double over. Tatham poked him in the stomach with the end of his own wooden Rudis a second time before flicking it up and knocking the Field Commander against his helmeted forehead with the flat of his blade and snorted, from under his mask.

"Deader than a dead Carthaginian." Tatham declared absently. "And thus, the great General Coulson of Carthage dies a, quite frankly, undignified demise."

"I'll show _you_ undignified," Coulson grunted back and tried to utilize some of his own martial art know-how to grab the offending sword and give the equally offending General a hefty kick to the groin region, but, unfortunately, Tatham got there first.

"And now not only does the great General Coulson of Carthage lack his middle, ring and little finger, but—" Tatham pulled the sword back with enough momentum that Coulson couldn't keep grip; as soon as Tatham worked the blade free, he gave Coulson's leg a vicious slap with the flat of the blade, and then another assault on the ribs for good measure.

Coulson did manage escape after that and to run off at an angle, arms outstretched behind him as he attempted to soften the flurry of blows Tatham landed on his thigh and shoulder. It lasted until Tatham grew tired of chasing and executed a rather risky maneuver which involved sweeping the blade of his sword against both of Coulson's ankles while the Field Commander was mid-transition between his landing and starting foot, which caused the man to trip and land in a rather undignified clatter of armored limbs and middle-aged mass. The floorboards creaked loudly in protest to Coulson's weight when he landed.

Tatham, thankfully, did not continue his assault once Coulson was down. Instead, he simply stood at Coulson's feet and shrugged.

"I mean, for a complete newcomer, you lasted about three minutes more than average. I'll give you that. Nice job."

"You beat on me solidly for three minutes!" Coulson barked back in offense, and Tatham nodded.

"You'd be surprised how many people I've sent bursting into tears after one and a half." Tatham gave him a hand up and turned, unexpectedly, to four figures stood off to one side. "We're about finished if you'd like to give it a go. I'm sure you can succeed where I failed in making him cry, Agent May."

Coulson very nearly reared back in horror when he realized that out of them four, it was indeed May were stood there watching. Bartos, who was also stood in the group, was grimacing. May meanwhile looked rather amused.

Tatham tapped Coulson hard on the back of the head with his sword and, having since took off his mask, waved his free hand at the side of his face, from the front of his vision to the very end of his peripheral.

The General gave him a small, knowing smile.

"Battlefield awareness, Phillip."

 **›››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹‹**

Kitting out the small semi-abandoned apartment room was easier than all initially expected. According to Koba, the Tac' agent who had stayed holed up in this same room for nearly two days in order to keep an eye on the surrounding buildings, this was where Yakov Aksakov had stayed during the final days of his HYDRA hunt. As the rest of the team got to work setting up cameras and microphones and adjusting the furniture to their needs, Koba handed over a stack of documents to Coulson for him to examine.

Aksakov had done some very serious digging. From history books on the old NEPA site to satellite images to roadmaps to several online documents on General Klokov to numerous documents on himself. How Aksakov had managed to get all of his files from his old NEPA days, Coulson did not know, but as he stood over a small table with May as the flicked through dozens upon dozens of dated reports and examinations on a six to sixteen-year-old Yakov. They were kept in a single leather file; embodied with a red star which bore the very familiar tentacle abomination that was HYDRA's insignia itself.

"Very legitimizing," May intoned guardedly. "Look, they even have uniforms."

"I think that's the point," Coulson replied, uneasy, as he flipped through the several pages of "after graduation analysis" and something that looked like a medical file. It was written in Russian, and Coulson was passable at the language, but he wasn't interested enough to read in depth. He turned the page.

To be faced with the excruciatingly detailed summary on how exactly Aksakov was abducted into HYDRA in the first place.

Turns out, Yakov's birth name was actually Jaakko Aalto. HYDRA had grabbed him from his kindergarten class during an outing to a nearby science and technology museum in Finland when he was five after a five-month long "interest mission" that, according to the report, was given the go ahead when it became apparent that then-Jaakko demonstrated superior intelligence and skills to that of his similarly aged peers. The file described in depth the pros and cons of the recruitment; how five-year-old Aksakov stood a foot and a half taller than his agemates, was rough on the playground and was physically more impressive. The report then went on to describe how Aksakov was physically taken. Forced injection after he managed to evade his capturers; they were compromised and the whole incident left three people injured and two others dead. One was a classmate of Aksakov's, and the incident was described as a violent shooting but no mention was ever made of little Jaska.

NEPA had hold of Aksakov's school photograph and the difference between that and the photographs NEPA took afterward (lots of photographs, Coulson noticed — some from angles that looked hidden, some more openly shot; all of younger Yakov running, climbing, fighting, sometimes standing and looking at the camera and sometimes sat completely unaware, and all of them gradually grew older until Aksakov himself looked only slightly younger than he does now) was striking. There was a deep set rage under that boy's face; and on it, too many cuts and bruises and what used to be a fairly conservative, standard hairstyle for the average Finnish middle-class youth had been shaved down to almost nothing.

Years of reports followed after that. Details explaining how seven-year-old Aksakov was easily competing with thirteen to fourteen-year-old combatants in hand to hand, how he was okay with a handgun and would progress with constant training, about how he was uneasy with knives but after several "encouragement fights" was capable enough to disarm his opponent. About he was receptive to HYDRA doctrine but kept his distance. An alarming piece of information referred to as a "kill test" described how nine-year-old Aksakov killed his 'first' with standard handgun at one-hundred meters. His second kill test at the age of ten was performed by crushing the victim's windpipe. All good marks, according to whomever wrote it. _High Pass_.

All up until Aksakov was sixteen, when he was "graduated" with the recommendation to be used as an infiltration agent into SHIELD (the same base where Grant Ward himself was trained, oddly enough — Coulson made a mental note to look up if any of their other little HYDRA spies originated from that same site) after behavioral conditioning. May voiced the opinion that ' _behavioral conditioning_ ' was HYDRA probably speak for ' _brainwashing_ '.

"The same deal with Gill," May recognized grimly. "Though I think Yakov himself has a thing to say about that."

She pointed to where a series of numbers and words that HYDRA had typed as his 'programming trigger code' were scribbled out in ballpoint until they were ineligible with such force that the paper had been ripped through. Aksakov clearly wanted that bit of infomation gone.

Speaking of the devil, Coulson had just finished and started looking at the additional information on NEPA when Aksakov himself, armed with a bag full of papers and a Yarygin pistol inside his wasitband, entered the room flanked on both sides by SHIELD personnel.

He took one look at the room, zeroed in on Coulson and dropped the bag onto the table.

"Need to plan now," he stressed, in broken English. "We have three days."

May blinked, and, typically, was the first to recover.

"Three days until what?"

Aksakov looked her dead in the eye and sighed. "Until HYDRA takes four children, put one into Sokovian or UN government, gives one a gun and tells them to assassinate ambassador, and tell two girls to go out like Romanov and kill. Three days until they graduate." and then, as an added bonus, as if things couldn't apparently get any worse. "I spoke to mind doctor, today. Body and mind doctor. They put machines in children's head, to stop them having powers unless we use remote." He fiddled with the hem of his shirt and produced a small chip like device, small enough to sit in the centre of his finger. "Small but dangerous. HYDRA controls some kadets, but some have powers and cannot controlled full. Now they can." To clarify, he expanded as he handed over the small device to Albertyn, who was armed with a plastic bag and tweezers. "Some kadets, power is only control. To lose power means no control and HYDRA all control."

And then, to summarize.

"First Kadet will have operation when ready. Half chance that Kadet may die. _That_ is why we must be quick."

 **›››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹‹**

In her entire HYDRA career, Nastya had been in 'Jail' at least a dozen or so times.

So when she was dragged out of bed and thrown into the familiar box room with it's small bed and zero windows or light, she wasn't exactly surprised.

"You can leave when you stop using your powers," the trainer who dragged her across the facility and down into the basement declared. "You will not eat or drink until you do."

"Then I'll die," Nastya shot back, stupidly.

The trainer laughed.

"You have to sleep sometime," the trainer replied. "And if not, then we have you when you collapse from dehydration."

And as if to prove his point, when the trainer left, a soldier armed with the familiar shape of a tranquilizer rifle under his arm took up position before the barred slot in the door, pulled up a chair and waited.

In response, Nastya sat down on her bed, folded her arms, and scowled.

 **›››** **| HYENADA |** **‹‹‹**

I've had the glorious honor of participating in HEMA once and there is nothing quite as terrifying as having a person try to hit you with a sword. Even when blunt.

Winston, or Tatham, is one of those characters who uses an unorthodox weapon in combat, although like all good Agents he'll likely pack a RONI-SI1 or a Smith & Wesson M&P. Considering how old he actually is, to him, I imagine the whole fad of ranged firearms is unorthodox in his head and not the other way around. Back in his day, you just stabbed a man and got on with it.

Drill Exercise is possibly the most boring thing in the universe and I don't recommend it to anyone.

May has a reason for being here; as does another character, who is the reason why May is here. He'll be introduced next episode, when the whole plan shabang will be delved into at greater length.

Filipp can and will mess anyone up; he's a big boy, and very unstable. Raisa would still probably distrust him enough to prevent compromising herself, but people need to remember that these guys are _teenagers_. Puberty doesn't stop just because they're getting plugged with HYDRA propaganda and Filipp is a fairly good looking dude by virtue of, uh, genetics.

The SHIELD gift-giving to newly instated officers is something we thought about yonks ago and it was too disgustingly adorable to not mention.

And with this, I must now eat something because I've actually been writing solidly for five hours. There are probably some minor spelling and grammatical errors caused by my shitty softwere, but I'll sort them out once I've stuffed my face and napped.

Guten Abend!


	6. Part One, Chapter Five

.

 **WARNING  
**

 **This Chapter Contains the Death of a Minor. **

**If you do not wish to read that part, then skip the segment titled** **1700HRS. Everything else is safe, it's just that one segment.**

 **›››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹‹**

 **| PART ONE |**  
CHAPTER FIVE  
 **›››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹‹**

There was a strict requirement in the Infantry Division for all personnel to have a specialization of Marksman or higher. It was a SHIELD Academy garbage term from the US Army; ranging from Nescient to Expert on a 750 Point scale. Those in the Intelligence Division could get away with being Amature so long as they progressed in other areas significantly enough to be worthwhile. Those in Tactical, and those troopers in specialized Commando squadrons, all required Expert grades.

An Agent's ranged ability, since 2010, had been calculated by a very specific program which measured everything from a participant's reaction time to their accuracy to their blood pressure and angle; from the amount of pressure they put on the trigger to how quickly they set up in the first place, to what order they shot the targets in. You could shoot all targets in record time and still be unable to achieve anything higher than Marksman at 562.5; a result depended on more than just how accurate they were or how fast they got the job done. The Program had come under fire for it, and many people had argued that it wasn't so much as a test of one's marksmanship but their combat prowess, but the skeptics had to admit; the Program was the best way to find out what made a real Infantry trooper a _trooper_ and not a glorified private security specialist.

The term in Infantry for 'Expert Grade' was Hyper-Lethal. Anyone over the point-scale of 656.25 was classified as Hyper-Lethal; and they were identified by a small skull and crosshair patch which, ordinarily, went alongside a Trooper's flag and Bat. badge. The guys in Tactical had the same gig.

Bartos, and most if not all of her troopers in Battalion VI, all wore crosshairs on their arms. They were only marginally behind Batallion IIV who were frequently stationed out between Isreal and Iraq.

Practice makes perfect, as it were, and at twenty minutes past midnight, Bartos and a small contingent of VI troopers took their positions around the east section of a no-name Palladium refinery intending to put their ranged ability to good use.

Their mission was fairly simple one.

HYDRA were not stupid, and to be able to neutralize them in the province entirely, they had to hit them hard, all at once.

It meant three teams of SHIELD operating simultaneously from three locations; Bartos and her team would be taking out the refinery for good under the guise of the SFL, Agent May and her own specialized team would be working with the SFL to stop the operation at Istokamen Prison, while Coulson, the General, and a more specialized unit of semi-Uniforms all took out the NEPA facility. On one hand, troopers would make light work of an overground boarding school, but the concern that Aksakov had was that the students would attack soldiers on sight.

A lack of insignia might give them a pause, and with Aksakov with them, the idea was that they would have most of the youngest children secured by the time the older ones figured out that the SHIELD team wasn't actually HYDRA.

If they hit HYDRA once, the other sections would shut down and go into hiding. As a result, this mission would be simultaneous and as quiet as possible.

At one hundred, they'd move in. Bartos reported on the radio that her team was on station and expected to move in soon. Albertyn gave her some map coordinates, a routine confirmation was returned, and after finishing off without any contradictory instructions at that final check, the mission was to proceed with a Go. At the confirmation, Bartos and her team went black. Everything was shut down aside from their own weapons.

Bartos signaled for her men, leaned down against a rocky outcropping submerged by a thorny breed of plant that clung merrily to her kelver, got comfortable behind her rifle, and zoned in.

 **›››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹‹**

 **1200HRS.**

The morning brought a Lock-In and several dozen missing Kadets. Lock-Ins were never any fun, because it usually meant someone like the Principal was coming for a speech or health checks or something equally boring.

Ivan is seven now so speeches are especially not as fun, and health checks suck no matter how old you are. Most kids think it works oppositely, but at least when he was little he used to be in such awe (which was a word Savelli says means reverence, which is another word Ivan doesn't understand — but it certainly sounds like it might mean the funny feeling in his stomach he feels when he looks at people like Comrade Aksakov and the Principle and Danya and Filipp and practically any other adult male Ivan knew) that he didn't care because he was so focused on whomever was speaking. Like the words just washed over him entirely and all he could think and see and her was just _them_ and their greatness.

Now it was boring, and Ivan had better things to be doing.

Like dragging Cyrek around the dorm by his boots while the other boy was wrapped in his blanket so he slipped across the wooden floor easier. He and Cyrek used to race around the dorm while some older boys and girls used to drag _them_ , but Ivan had grown too much in the past few months and now even big Kadets like Sonya couldn't lift him properly.

Comrade Kusok says that if Ivan keeps on growing the way he does, he'll be even bigger than Filipp. Ivan hopes he's right. Then he might age out before he was nine and that would be rather fantastic.

NEPA liked to send the younger Kadets out for a romp on the grounds to cool off their excess energy in the mornings, usually after breakfast. The fact that they had done neither properly and had ended up eating something far less nutritious in paper bags had most of the Kadets in a state of cagey hyperactivity. Ivan had already been told off by no less than three other Kadets because he was acting out, but he couldn't help it, he was so _bored_.

Somehow, Cyrek's boots not only managed to untie themselves but they slipped off and Ivan, having gained momentum with the lack of weight, bumped into Anatoli's bunk in a display of flailing arms. Anatoli himself was leaning on his front and playing with a wooden toy puzzle, only he was actually trying to figure it out in constrast to Ivan had just beat against the floor until it went his way.

"You fat stone!" Anatoli growled when Ivan climbed over his back. "Get off!"

"Fuck you," Ivan replied sweetly. It was a thing he heard Danya use and he'd been parroting it ever since. He got a slap for it once when he used it against one of the female instructors, but Akaskov had just laughed and he got extra points when he used them during fights. Ivan wasn't sure what the deal was. They were just words. Like Hail Hydra, _Fuck You_ was perhaps the most commonly used words Ivan had heard. Honor and Duty and Capitalist Enemies were up there as well.

Ivan particularly liked _Fuck You_ , though. Partly because it never failed to make at least someone laugh.

Today it was Saveli, who Ioannes never failed to amuse.

Ivan had a strange relationship with the weird boy. On one hand, Ivan got along well with Saveli, who ended up in Prep Two early and had this weird thing where he could hurt people with his blood and stuff, and was a bit weird to look at and even weirder to actually know. Saveli was okay, in the sense that he never threatened to stab Ivan in the face, which Nastya had at least six times in the past month alone, for Saveli liked all the little kids, even if his idea of "liking them" was downright freaky. Saveli liked Ivan more, though, even if it was only secretly, because Ivan was something called _impervious_ and it only took about a year for him to stop freaking out whenever he looked at the eleven-year-old and start analyzing him properly not on the outside but in the inside, instead.

(although his stomach sort of did this weird squeezy thing when he did it, but that was on the inside, not the outside so it doesn't count)

But Saveli is still a bit strange and he's missing an eye and he's smaller than Ivan even though Ivan is seven and Saveli is nearly twelve. It doesn't mean anything, really, but Ivan has been told that he needs to start reading people, so he does.

Ivan stands taller than a lot of the over ten's even though he's only seven and he can lift up forty kilograms without trying these days, he eats a lot of food and sometimes his brain decides that it'd be a good idea to walk places he shouldn't. Sometimes Ivan gets lost in his head and in the world and in feelings and stuff and- _yeah_ Comrade Kusok says it's not his job to follow Ivan around all day, but he does it anyway, he can't help it. Ivan is smart and he's strong and he'll probably make a good HYDRA agent one day.

Even though he secretly doesn't want to because he knows that there is something behind those gates and maybe, just maybe, that if so many people out there believe one thing that isn't their thing, maybe they're... right and NEPA and HYDRA and Ivan is wrong.

(again, that is an inside thing not an outside thing)

So Ivan doesn't think about it and instead thinks about Kadets like Saveli who can fight him with his staff or Aloyna who worships some of the instructors and can shoot practically any weapon ever, and then Nastya who can be really mean and Janek who is really smart and helps Ivan with his maths (because it's boring) and Cyrek who is only slightly younger than Ivan and his Best Friend and then Sonya who can tell whenever someone is lying and is nicer to Ivan than most others. And then there is Anatoli who called him a fat stone who is actually really nice.

Cyrek manages to get his boots on and comes stomping over. He's bored and annoyed and so is Ivan.

Ivan, in fact, is so bored he might just wander away _on purpose_ this time.

"Where is everyone?" Cyrek grumps and kicks the bedpost. He earns a look from Anatoli, and Saveli, who is reading a book, glances over his pages. "It's been forever."

"It's been an hour," Janek shoots back. He's only nine so he's not in charge because Saveli is eleven but he acts like it. "Just leave it," he says, firm enough to make the instructors proud. Ivan huffs out and wonders if he'd get in trouble for climbing the pillars again and cutting up bedsheets to make parachutes for the toy soldiers. They've already played Tactical on the 3D world game on the floor, like a sandpit, but a plastic real world with rivers and hills and they have to use the toy soldiers to make maneuvers and whatnot. They played for nearly an hour but it got boring afterward. Saveli rolls his eyes and wanders off to go to the bathroom, which means he'll take forever because he is obsessive with cleaning and uses the soap _twice_. Cyrek grabs his book on reflex, but it's nothing interesting. Something about Advanced Korean.

Janek must sense that Ivan is losing interest and about to _compromise them_ because he hisses between his teeth.

"Look, it's fine, it's not a big deal. Let's just find something to do for awhile, okay?"

"Okay!" Ivan snaps, and he stomps off to the other side of the room to find their ball. They're getting too old for most games, their instructors say, but it's still fun to chuck the ball at each other as hard as they can, and now they play so when the ball hits a limb, it dies, and they have to keep on playing until only one person is still in the game. Their ball is one of those rubbery red ones and Ivan likes it because he can bounce it against the walls and pillars at angles and when it hits other people, it's rather fantastic.

When Saveli comes back Ivan's mood is simmering to the point that he throws the ball right at his head without thinking, hard enough that if it landed it would bruise and swell up (he did it to Pytor yesterday afternoon, not on purpose, but it's not Ivan's fault he's so darn _slow_ ) but Saveli catches it one handed, and peers around the bright red projectile with something dangerously close to a manic grin.

"Right arm out!" Cyrek shouts with a vindictive glee that isn't really Cyrek but is something training tends to do to all of them when they filter into something the instructors call _the zone_.

Saveli raises his eyebrows and tosses the ball to his left hand, pinning the other behind his back. "Ivan Flionenko, did you just cheat?" He asks, dancing back and feinting a throw.

"Shut up and play," Ivan says, glaring, and Saveli grins. Only he doesn't hit Ivan; he turns at the last second, whips around and nails Janek in the knee.

"Sonofa- ow!" Janek grabs the rebound and fires the ball straight back.

In the end, Ivan's anger leeches away the more they play and the more intense it gets — it's impossible not to. NEPA likes to say that they're independent and adult and very, very special, but they are still kids and watching Saveli hop around on one foot and Janek hobble on his knees while Anatoli swears under his breath because both of his arms are gone and he'll have to resort to kicking, while Cyrek and Ivan still have all four limbs because the three older boys had a grudge match first... It brings out something so strange and _normal_ that Ivan doesn't have time to think about why most of their comrades have gone missing or while none of the instructors will tell them anything; it doesn't matter. They're here and they're having fun and Ivan manages to slam Janek in the head with the ball and does a one-armed dance while the older boy groans and flops backward on a bed in defeat.

Ivan has the ball again and he's about to lob it at Cyrek, who's winning because nobody can seem to hit him no matter how hard they try, when Saveli comes from nowhere and grabs the ball from his hands; Anatoli goes in for a tackle and Ivan shouts as he jumps in too. Cyrek joins in because a pile on is always good fun — Janek wriggles over, still not using his limbs, and flops on top of them all of them like a giant, hairy caterpillar — and when Comrade Kusok comes in and calls them a bunch of lunatics, they're laughing until they're breathless.

 **›››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹‹**

 **1300HRS.**

After S.H.I.E.L.D's initial fall, the how's and why's involving the planning and execution of missions was much more stringently monitored. It was clearly stated in the Sokoiva Accords — in order to act, S.H.I.E.L.D. had to jump through several dozen hoops first, starting off within their own purview and ending before the feet of the UN itself. It was a process that could take up to a week, if particularly sensitive.

Thankfully, in the case of the Sokovian HYDRA academy, they had an ace up their sleeve.

Tatham was the highest-ranking officer within the D.I. Within his own division, he answered only to himself and therefore had both the power and authority to move proceedings straight through the committees, past the ethics council, the Tactics and Intelligence office and he barely even glanced at Investigations and Judiciary. In short, he ignored standard procedure straight up until he hit the roadblock he couldn't surpass himself, the UN. In two hours, Tatham had done nearly four days of work. It was a problem that required stringent contractual reading and approximately forty-eight separate signatures but, in the end, it hastened their work to a more appropriate length.

On one hand, yes, it was a good idea to have all these failsafes in place; it prevented isolated incidents where numerous people became affected and nobody ended up truly accountable, it stopped small, individual disturbances that mounted up to problems like, well, _HYDRA_. Yet, on the other hand, they had no time for diplomacy and security. Not this time. They needed to act soon.

"On your head, Winston," Rodger Krier was their current representative to the UN. Alongside Annemarie Magnussen of the United Nations Security Council, they sat on the other end of a computer screen from their respective global locations. Jeffery Mace and General Glenn Talbot also featured on a pair of monitors, with three other men who Coulson did not recognize. Tatham, Coulson, and Bartos were the only ones physically in the room. "I do hope for your sake that this mission goes smoothly."

"For all our sakes, as do I, sir." Tatham used to be a subordinate of Krier's, and was suitably respectable. He bowed his head only slightly enough to indicate this, hands clasped securely behind the small of his back. Not to be impolite, he also introduced Magnussen to Mace and Šindelář, Zheng and Teodros to Coulson. The three other gentlemen were, Coulson soon discovered, part of the more 'divisional' areas of S.H.I.E.L.D. itself.

Zheng, a small Asian gentlemen with thick glasses and a firm gaze, was the representative for S.P.E.A.R. the branch of S.H.I.E.L.D. that operated within Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan with permission from the People's Republic of China. Tatham introduced him, in Mandarin, and bowed respectfully at the waist, and Zheng himself did the same. He was here because two of the Kadets discovered were children originating from Taiwan, two siblings, a son and a daughter of a prominent state official.

Šindelář, meanwhile, broad and large with a wide forehead and sparkling blue eyes, belonged to the European Monitoring Investigation and Enforcement Division, or EuroMIND, which, due to the differences of European law to that of the UN and US models, provided a specialized set of means to easy operation within the EU and it's countries. Sokokiva had been an EU country since the start of 2012 and therefore, to operate within its borders, S.H.I.E.L.D. had to go through the EU Security Council, which was largely Šindelář's role. Officially, Batallion VI belonged to EuroMIND, not S.H.I.E.L.D. itself, but such niggling little matters were mostly overlooked. One had to be really stickler for the rules to even recall the fact that EuroMIND existed in the first place.

And then there was Teodros, small, dark and impeccably groomed, who was the Chairman of S.W.O.R.D. the _Sentient World Observation and Response Department,_ a smaller Sub-Division specializing in extraterrestrial threats. It was, for a lack of a better term, the Space and Aeronautics Department of S.H.I.E.L.D. He was here because in order to progress in missions, surveillance and reconnaissance tools such as drones and satellites were required and both fell under his astute responsibility. That, and to destroy the refinery would require specialized drones capable of detonating explosives, which were illegal in EU Sokovia.

All in all, there were a lot of pieces to the puzzle, and in turn, it made Coulson more than just a little uncomfortable. Yet, his fears also went unfounded; for despite the layers of political tape, each individual of the SHIELD Divisional Infantry Security Council where more than willing to see results.

Until the matter of what to do with the children came up. Tatham, who was suited to combat and not (judging by his... rather _long_ record) childrearing immediately went silent on the issue, and Coulson grimaced.

It was Bartos who saved them all.

"Dr. Mikaelson of S.H.I.E.L.D. Medical and Human Service Department made sure to examine or current... policy on prospective under-age persons implicated in... illegal activity apprehended by S.H.I.E.L.D." She winced at the wording, but it was, unfortunately, all legal terms in which couldn't be beaten around. "Generally speaking, there is a unanimous response. Children implicated in such situations require, much the same if not more than their adult counterparts, to undergo stringent rehabilitation and examination before being released. It's a policy similar to that of ours regarding Inhumans and other powered individuals. Until they are deemed safe to release, they are subject to S.H.I.E.L.D. Welfare Code 363 and S.H.I.E.L.D. Security Code 877, which means they have to be involuntarily held at a secure location until deemed safe to release, after which they'll go through an investigation to determine criminal competency, and if found liable, referred to the UN court or simply incarnated at one of our holding facilities."

She looked at Mace, who suddenly looked very disturbed.

"But that's... not for children, obviously. Unless they really are, undoubtedly, unsafe, it's just a matter of releasing them to their respective home countries and families, if they still have them, when they are considered well enough to do so."

Zheng, who's country, much like the United States, was a fan of reform schools and government guardianship, frowned. "And if these children are neither safe nor have families?"

"It depends on where the child originates from," Tatham responded. "Most of the children can't be identified. HYDRA has either compromised their credentials or they were born into it, so just short of assuming their nationality, there is nothing much S.H.I.E.L.D. can do in the regard of families and organization." He glanced at Bartos. "You grew into your uniform, Trooper. Explain what you know."

"Neh," Bartos shrugged and conceded. "Both of the parents where Agents. One died early on and the other passed away shortly afterward. MS." She looked at Mace again. "S.H.I.E.L.D. used to have a protocol where, upon the deaths of the parents without any available extended family, the children and dependants of Agents lost in the field could be legally be found retired or local-serving Agents to act _in loco parentis_ if their parents willed it, short of sending kids across the globe to their home countries to fall under an unfamiliar system. Like fostering, but for S.H.I.E.L.D. One of the reasons for the Pre-Academy." She paused. "It was only cited to when a child was over the age of thirteen and was obviously ingrained into S.H.I.E.L.D. Kids who grow up in the service make good servicemen, and a lot of them hated the idea of going back to a 'civilian' setting."

Tatham grunted. "S.H.I.E.L.D. called it Sponsorship. If a prospective child is orphaned, over the age of thirteen and subject to falling into their country's care system with no family members liable, S.H.I.E.L.D. put forward foster families in the service and provided them with an education at the academies, if they qualified. Sort of a compensation packet for getting their parents killed, I guess." He looked across the room at Bartos again, and then at the screens. "I've sponsored eight of 'em myself."

"He takes his parental responsibilities very seriously," Bartos said dryly, but at Tatham's sudden glare, shut up.

Rodger Krier was a frontrunner for Chairman of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy of... Something. It wasn't clear to anyone which of the academies would be redesigned and reopened first, but it was almost mutually decided that either Communications or Operations would be given to Krier. Pre-Academy was also on the list, but Krier was severe and not too compatible with younger children, for obvious reasons, so who would get that role remained uncertain. Weaver had already applied to be issued SciTech. Krier sat up notably when he realized what they were insinuating. He was not pleased.

"So you propose something similar for these children?" Annemarie Magnussen did not look too pleased with this development, either. All of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academies had to go through extreme vetting procedures after the fallout with HYDRA; everything from the curriculum to the site to the staff and, eventually, the students would be overseen and controlled. Over seven hundred dead U20s did not look good to anyone, and Coulson had to agree with the UN on that one.

Coulson sighed. "With all due respect, Ma'am, these children may never qualify to be released at all." He waved a hand at the piled up documents that had been tidied up at the last second before the conference. "Some of these children are... to put it bluntly, dangerous and some of them would defiantly qualify for an 899."

Mace glanced at Bartos, who grimaced and translated. "Unprecedented Threat to Life. 899. That's what the Fridge was for. If any of them are tried, they'll either be classified as an 877 or an 899. The former is less severe than the latter."

S.H.I.E.L.D. had a long list of codes when it came to detaining people, and an even longer list for detaining their own Agents. Many men and women saw stuff in the field that messed with their head; some ended up under the influence of strange objects and chemicals, and some ended up getting seriously injured. There was a famous case a number of years back where a contingent of Troopers ended up being exposed to a newly refined Midnight Oil and all turned on each other; six were slapped with a 232, wich translated to a thirty-day medical hold, and two of them were slapped with a 363. Those two never made it back into the corps and ended up in a facility god knows where until one killed himself and the other escaped.

"If that's the case, then we can't release them. They'll have to say at a secure location and be held, with appropriate treatment, of course. Some of them can easily qualify after a few months and be released to their family members, if they have them. For most of them though, we're looking at an easy case of Conservatorship. We've got some specialists flying in. They'll be wards of the organization until they are safe enough to qualify as wards of the state to whichever country they originate. That's assuming that they don't age up in our care. Some of the Kadets are nearly sixteen."

"The law on holding children for medical and mental health reasons is sketchy at best," Šindelář spoke up. "On top of the law regarding dangerous children, there will have to be additional checks and balances in place."

"That comes after we extract them," Tatham reminded everyone. "My main concern is getting them out of that facility without compromising the lives of my Troopers, and what we do with them immediately after. Some of the younger ones can be transported en masse, but the older ones... They'll need specialized transport capable of giving constant medical attention. They can't be flown out of the country awake. If they don't come willingly, which I assume many of them won't, they'll need to be sedated. We have measures to ensure that thanks to some... technology, but we don't intend to use it as a constant resource. The tech hasn't even been certified for safety."

"And where do you intend to fly these children to once they are secured?"

Coulson looked at Tatham, who shrugged. He then turned to Krier. "You do remember the Service Academy, don't you, sir?"

 **›››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹‹**

 **1400HRS.**

Nearly four-thousand miles away, at one in the morning local time, with a deep bow and a " _Konbanwa, chotto matte kudasai Imai-San_ -" inside a moonlit meeting room, two people, one male and bowing with a finely tailored suit and intelligence folder, caucasian with a winning smile and polite demeanour and one female, older and far more dignified, equally respectable but guarded, rightfully, approached each other like two combatants on a battlefield. Uneasily, and with great care.

"I must apologize for my Japanese," he tells her. "It is undefendable."

The woman laughs, if only slightly. "I speak English well enough," she replies.

John Dutcheval wins over Minako Imai in the time it takes him to remove his badge and present it to her for inspect. "Please forgive the intrusion," he smiles, perfect, spotless. "My name is Agent Dutcheval of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division."

Instantly, Minako Imai's face goes hard and blank; but Dutch is master negotiator, a product of years upon years of refinement and technology and training.

"I have some... important information in which you deserve to be made aware of," he smiles, but this time it's sadder, less relaxed. "Your son, the eldest."

Anguish.

"My Satoshi... is dead."

Dutch has done many things, but managing a grieving mother is not one of them. His compassion wins out in the end, however, but that fluttering fear at the base of his stomach still makes him pause.

It often does.

He hesitates when he goes to hand her the folder.

"I dare say that is not the case..." he says, gently. "... Our intelligence... Your son is alive... if not how you remember him."

She takes the folder.

After a long period of silence, of silent, angry tears and furious glares, Minako Imai looks up at Dutch with the fury only a mother scorned and harmed could hope to bear. "Where?" She demands.

"If you would come in," Dutch sighs. "I can have you ready to help liberate your son and over twenty other children in less than six hours."

 **›››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹‹**

 **1600HRS.**

Tatham catches Coulson's shoulder on the way out of the conference room.

"Walk with me," he says, uneasily.

Coulson likes to think that he's familiar enough with Tatham's moods — but this one, though. Coulson blinked and nodded at May, who was still waiting on that drink, and wandered down a pathway to the more isolated areas of Camp Sebastian. The air is cold and crisp and Tatham looked out over the mountainside with both hands propped behind his back.

"I need to ask a... well, not a favor. I wouldn't call it that." He stops suddenly and pulled his mouth into a thin line. "Coulson-... Phil, I... You're, uh..." A pause. "Y'know, now that you've taken a step back in terms of active participation with your team I was wondering if..."

Coulson waits. Sometimes humor and sometimes forcing it can help, but Tatham had never been _speechless_ before. Hill was one of the only people who could achieve that feat and Coulson hopes to _God_ that this isn't for that same reason.

In the end, he doesn't have to wait for long.

"You... When you were a standard intelligence officer, you ah, participated fairly frequently in... mentoring younger agents. Taking them under your wing."

"Yeah," Coulson replied, uneasily. He has. From Barton to Dasiy to, for a small period of time, Ward, and a few other agents over the years. Always young. Always _kids_. It was written a thousand times on his psych eval; Phil Coulson worked better when he was needed, when he had younger agents who he could direct in the right direction. He liked teaching — doing so at the Academy was his go-to plan if he ever found himself put of the field for good. One of his biggest regrets was never having children of his own. Since the moment he was qualified, he'd took one or two agents under his wings at various points; recent graduates who were hopelessly out of their depths for one or two missions for guidance, which weren't much but they were enough. Now, of course, Daisy had come into her own and FizSimmons, well, they'd flourished.

"Obviously, some of these children might need one or two people down the line but I was wondering if you'd have time for a more... immidate concern of mine."

"Please don't tell me you've spawned another kid, Winston." Coulson groaned.

Tatham had lived for a long time but his... ability to procreate hadn't exactly slowed down with age. Of what he knew of, Winson had at least seven children from four different people. He hadn't yet produced a child with Hill, which Coulson knew if it hadn't happened already it never would, but still. He was the Godfather to one of the younger ones. Bertram. Good kid, nearly twenty-six.

Tatham himself sighed. "Oh no," he very nearly laughed. "Hill won't have it. I don't blame 'er, either. No..." He looked back and grimaced. "With Dr. Mikaelson flying in to help with the children, he's had to step back in his, eh, evaluation of a young man by the name of Mikheil Khurtsilava. Georgian lad. We call 'em Mickey... He was one of our kids at the Pre-Academy before it's fall and he's spent the last couple of months qualifying for a probationary agent position assuming the Academy isn't rebuilt for a good year or so and... I... I was responsible for that, he was supposed to be going into the Infantry but, that's probably the worst decision I could make, for him, at least."

"He's one for your Sponsees?" Coulson asked. Tatham was another one who always had someone under his wing. "Never heard of someone changing Sponsors before."

"It's not a decision I take lightly," Tatham looked uncomfortable. "I'm... Mick is... a high maintenance case. Lots of attention is required, lots of patience; he requires a fair amount of handholding, not because he's inept at all but because..." Tatham sighed. "He doesn't quite work the way you and I do; brilliant young man, one of the fastest and most capable combatants I've ever started training, reliable... It's just that... Emotionally, he's not all there."

"An emotional disability." Coulson frowned. "Rare for someone to get that far into training."

Tatham spotted an aircraft in the distance and held onto it with his eyes. "I've sent a file up to your office if you want to examine it in more detail but the short version is: this kid doesn't... feel pain. Or pleasure, for that matter. Or, well, anything. S.H.I.E.L.D. found him at the age of fourteen at an underground boxing ring; him and several other underage fighters all had some notable power or ability, one of the reasons why we were acquainted with the situation. He was taken in by two agents and after some testing, they found a series of tumors along the base of his spine and wedged behind his thalamus. The tumors are inoperable but non-cancerous and from what they can tell, they interrupt all signals of pain and pleasure before they reached the parietal lobe, cerebral cortex, and his limbic system."

A moment of silence, and Tatham adjusts the kevlar resting against his shoulders by shrugging both, rolling them backward.

"That boy's whole life has been spent awash in a sea of numbness. The myriad psychological effects have, from what we can tell, rendered him docile and quiet, but they've also contributed to an inability to register senses that define the wants and needs of others. Without pain, he has no reason to fear the fall, but without desire, he has no reason to climb, either. Really what he needs is a more... direct inspirational approach, but, y'know I am not that man." A sigh. "I've, eh, made a mistake with him — trained him like I would a standard Trooper and all it's done..." He licked his bottom lip and grimaced. "You remember Grant Ward, right? Brilliant boy when he was younger and he turned out a fucking lunatic in the end; he wasn't like that naturally, and Mick... He doesn't... Intentionally, want to do anything to anyone but..."

Coulson blinked. "I'll see to him, where's he at?"

"I-... Oh, okay." It was so sudden, Tatham could only nod his head and look off. "That's... _Great_. Uh, he'll be flying in with Dr. Mikaelson; he'll be seeing him every month or so, to catch up, but Dr. Miller has offered to pick up any slack if he needs it."

Coulson had surprised himself with his immediate response. Maybe because it was he hadn't had someone to invest in for a while, or maybe because just the mention of Grant Ward had him immediately pushing _to try better this time_ , Coulson doesn't know. He's half convinced that May is going to roll her eyes and tell him off, but... It's fine, he thinks. He's worked with plenty of agents before. No reason to stop now.

He's already decided that he won't be a constant figure in the Kadet's lives; he's too highly ranked, too involved with HYDRA and it is something that is just... best left for the specialists to deal with, but this boy? Coulson will look him over.

That's if he survives long enough to see this mission through, of course.

And with that Coulson sighed.

This was not going to be easy.

 **›››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹‹**

 **1700HRS.**

The instructors who told them to get dressed into their fatigues and led them into the great hall used for larger exercises, only there are no Kadets fighting for equipment or a spot to sit; everyone is quiet and there is nothing out but them, alone in a hall too big and too loud. Nearly nineteen of the current Kadets all stand in one large semicircle, dressed in white paper trousers and overshirts. Some of them looked... off, Ivan noticed. Like they weren't all that there. The Principle, Comrade Klokov, examined them all with narrowed eyes.

"Young Comrades," he shouted. "Hail Hydra!"

Setting his feet, Ivan and the rest of his fellow comrades all threw their hands up. "Hail Hydra!" They shouted aand the Principle turned to Filipp, who was stood directly behind Pytor. Both hands were on the boy's smaller shoulders, dwarfing him. Filipp is a big boy, one of the biggest, but in front of Pytor, he looks like a giant.

He stormed over towards where they had entered, in their smart lines, expression tight and furious. "You're going to make an example," the Principle announced, waving to the rows of silent, pale-faced trainees. He turned back the other Kadets, those stood at the back who had been missing. "You are going to prove that you are worthy to Hydra, to the One True Purpose. To the Master." A pause. "You will notice, young comrades, that you feel different; that you are no longer as strong as you used to be, that you are weaker, less capable."

Ivan had to wonder why that was the case. Something was clearly wrong with them, but most of them had done nothing wrong, of that he knew. Random punishments weren't unheard of — Ivan had been punished because he was going to make a mistake in the past, not just because he'd made one, but never did they usually involve everyone.

"This is Hydra's will," Klokov glared. "You rely on your impure instincts, but one day, this will not be true. To commit you must obey, and to obey, you must overcome." He looks at them all a second time and Ivan couldn't be sure, but he felt like the Principle's eyes dragged on him. Uncertainty settled in his chest, heavy and dragging. He'd fought and hurt and broken more bones than he could count, been beaten and cajoled into doing things he'd never want to do otherwise but those were tests. Tests with a right answer and a wrong, a procedure to follow and a reward to back him up. He had a feeling that this would not be the same. The Principle took a step back, and another, until he was out of the way.

"Now, Young Comrades, you are going to fight for your honor." He turned sharply and, much to Ivan's horror, settled his gaze on him. "Comrade Ivan! Step forward to Comrade Filipp."

Ivan looked to his instructors, searching for answers, but they all looked at him, met his gaze and they gave him no hints. Yet there was one thing that Ivan understood, and it was that if any of them were to make it, then they needed to know that HYDRA's will was right and just; any hesitation from Ivan might transfer to the others and one small drop can taint a well. So he steps forward and forward, one step, two steps, three steps, four, until he's right in front of Filipp and Pytor. The smaller boy, he realized then, was covered in bruises; his face and throat were swollen.

"Young Comrades," Kolklov barked. "You will now fight for your honor. All of you. Whomever comes out on top shall succeed. Fail," a pause. "And one shall know about it."

Nobody moved. Ivan took one more second to stare at Pytor, who knew better than to raise his head and make eye contact, and he allowed himself just a moment feel the ugly shiver of — not empathy, but almost-understanding. But he couldn't. Hesitation meant death. So Ivan dug inside himself for that dark, twisted place that allowed him to work on his knife technique and fire a pistol at human targets and beat up a smaller Kadet and practice fatal chokeholds where one squeeze could kill. The place and reason and rationality vanished and all that mattered was the test, where failure was fatal and humiliation and... nothing else, could ever measure up.

One second, and nothing more.

Ivan reared backward and drove his boot into Pytor's nose with enough force to break the cartilage of his nose and send a sharp, thin shard impaling into the front of his cranium, into his brain.

He fell in slow motion. There was a moment where it seemed like Pytor was still aware, still alive, where his eyes drifted up and his face crumpled for a split second before falling loose in death; a crease between his brows before his limbs gave out and his body slumped to collapse against Filipp's unmoving legs.

And that broke the spell; immediately, all the Kadets pressed in close in one furious frenzy of action, the dam broken by Ivan's assault, and they attacked each other with kicks and punches, only there was one notable difference; they were just physical attacks. Ivan had trained in brawls before and always, someone used their powers; it was just natural, something they did.

Ivan ducked from someone's swinging punch and looked across the room. He saw Nastya physically bleed, and then he knew. This was it. HYDRA had taken everything and now they were the true masters.

Someone grabbed Ivan under the arms and, hidden amongst a body of Kadets too nervous to go against a fully-fledged near-graduate, avoided them while simultaneously looking for easier, smaller targets. Ivan tried to struggle but Daniil was a lot stronger than him; broader and harder. He half-threw Ivan under the nearby benches, hidden by the infective lights above in a dark, small space, and Ivan was about to turn around and climb back out when Danya frowned and waved him back. "Stay," he hissed in English and turned just in time to knock out a rather confused Diederich clean with one solid hook. "Stay there." He warned.

He wasn't the only one; Cyrek had been shoved under there as well. It was a small space; barely enough for Cyrek let alone Ivan, and he crawled over to where the smaller boy was sat. Together they watched the carnage unfold.

Eventually, it subsided; Kolklov called for a halt and the frenzy slowed, not at once but in groups here and there, the Kadets being too keyed up to turn off the switch just like that. Ivan watched Filipp stagger back, blood on his boots and his knuckles, and the rush of the fight fade from his face.

"Well done," Kolklov told them through the sudden, echoing silence. "Everyone back to your rooms or dorms. You shall be called for dinner at the standard time."

And that was that. They've just beaten each other senseless, and now they were expected to just return to their respective dorms, just like that.

Except, Ivan and Cyrek didn't. They sat there under the bleachers and stayed quiet, unseen. Time dragged on and the room got darker; quieter, but they still didn't move, or speak.

Until Sonya came climbing in with them. They could have been there for hours at that point and Ivan didn't really know. All he could see was Pytor falling. Most of the injured had been taken away; Ivan had been looking right at them but he registered nothing. When he zoned back in, however, everything was gone. Even the blood. Sonya struggled through the small space, wearing her uniform now, sporting one black eye and two cuts to her mouth. Cyrek managed to let her pass, and she sat between them, legs crumbled up at an uncomfortable angle to fit. "Dinner will be soon," she told them and Ivan wondered if he'd be able to eat anything again for as long as he lived. He felt sick and the slow, distant rumble of danger in the back of his mind loosed into a sudden crash when he realized that Sonya had been one of the ones taken away.

Cyrek realized too. "What did they do?" He asked, horrified.

She shrugged. "They took my powers away," she replied, gravely.

"Why?" Ivan whispered. He'd never ask why, ordinarily. _Why_ usually meant someone who did not want to comply with orders — that they needed justification in their actions.

"Why do we do any of this?" Sonya shot back, but gently, and Ivan had the distinct, horrifying realization that he couldn't answer with anything concrete.

 **›››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹‹**

 **1800HRS.**

"shit, _shit shit shit_ -" Bartos pushed through two Troopers; the other three in front of her immediately moved, the presence of a superior officer trumping their surprise. They turned away to show Coulson, May and another Tactical agent leaning over blueprints of the prison. "We've got a problem."

Coulson turned with such force that he nearly gave himself a headache. "What?" He demanded. "What is it?"

"Just got a call from our man; those fucking bastards put all the chips in one go, and forget about recovery; they sent them all out and had them beat on each other to send the message. From what Akaskov tells us, we've got at leat twenty odd injured Kadets in there. Fourteen of them seriously injured."

Hissing through his teeth, Coulson ran both hands against his hair and turned to May. "We need to get in there as quickly as possible."

"Aksakov says he'll concentrate on the older Kadets for now; he's going through the ranks giving them sedatives under the guise of painkillers, but he won't have a lot of time. The other men and women will realize what he's doing sooner or later, and we don't know if they'll resort to... extreme measures to keep the Kadets from our grasp."

Coulson glared at the Commander.

"It's fucking Hydra, Coulson. What the fuck do you expect?!"

 **›››** **| HYENADA |** **‹‹‹**


	7. A wonderful update for your faces

Well, well, things are coming to a close for Part One, so it's time for a little update, me thinks.

You'll have noticed I've been away for a few days, and that's because I've been doing some heavy PT in preparation for a trip me and my course will be taking. It involves climbing up a mountain and spending three days in a military camp playing soldier, so as you can expect, I'm tired and I'm getting ready for that.

The event itself is on the 21st and I won't be back for at least four days; I'll have a chapter for you the second I get back, but that's depending on whether or not I can physically stand up long enough to post it immediately!

Some people asked for character sheets and after a word with my lovely Co-Author, Supremis, we've decided that we are going to launch our own forum. It's easier to use than my blog, and has sperate subsections in which we can organize everything. This means that I can have all of my stuff from all my stories in one place, including some of my own personal stories and worlds. It's in planning, and I'll still be cross-posting from my blog, but Supremis doesn't have the same obligations as I (You lucky bastard, I might add) so while I'm getting shot at with paintballs in the middle of the night wearing night vision wondering how in the name of hell this prepares me for Navy engineering, he'll be getting on with that.

I have seen your reviews! Don't ya'll worry. I've had no time to properly reply (sorry to all those people who got swamped in my over the top replies in the past, I get excited) but I appreciate your support and critique all the same.

Oh, and if any of you are interested in the Hunger Games, I've got a thing if you want to take part.

As for me, I've got some boots to clean.

~ MH.


	8. Part One, Chapter Six - Interlude

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 **›››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹‹  
** **| PART ONE |  
** CHAPTER SIX  
 **›››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹‹**

 **INTERLUDE**

S.H.I.E.L.D. 9-1-9 was the one of many CXD 23500 Airborne Mobile Command Stations of the Divisional Infantry. Unlike the ill-fated Bus, the plane, which bore the same Sousa, was designed first and foremost for rapid troop deployment. It was supposed to be a replacement of Coulson's, originally, but with the unexpected completion of the Zephyr, it was given to the Infantry who wasted no time in cutting it down to military size and replicating it in an affordable manner. There was a fleet of nine, now. Each one had been bestowed the names of important S.H.I.E.L.D. members of the past.

The heavily modified Boeing C-17 Globemaster III's looked almost identical on the outside. Inside, however, there was a fair number of differences.

"Not as classy as our own," May noted idly. From beyond her shoulder, Winston Tatham snorted loudly.

"There is nothing about the Infantry that a mile close of classy, Agent May." He led the way into a spartan area filled with computer banks and holographic screens named _PREPARATION_ and sat heavily on one faux leather chair mounted to the floor, which strained under his weight. "We're under the impression that one's toys should reflect their owners." He gave the Analytics Console before him a friendly slap. "Military rugged, bare-bones, but completely and designed for one purpose and that said purpose is kicking ass in a punctual and sophisticated manner."

SOUSA9 was the newest of the planes, designated personally to Infantry Battalion VI, and from what May could tell, it was designed to do just that.

The plane was manned by a forty-five strong team of engineers, pilots and computer specialists from S.H.I.E.L.D. Communications and Logistics, and Intelligence. The rest of the personnel were all Security Operatives. May had received a number of looks since she had boarded, but thus far, she had yet to face off any of Tatham's mouthy little boots. May tended to elicit mostly respect — years of treating Troopers appropriately had done wonders to thaw a naturally cool relationship, but there were always one or two.

In the end, though, it wasn't May who got on the wrong side of the Uniforms.

Bartos came wandering in just before the plane took off with a dozen or so folders under one arm, organized and diligent as far as S.H.I.E.L.D. Troopers went in the sense that she was now used to paperwork and knew how to do it as effectively as possible without any fanfare. There was also a deference to rank, in the sense that the Commander, without asking, set up Winston's area of desk for him without any apparent input, seemingly correctly. The man just sat there, satisfied, and barely acknowledged Bartos throughout the entire exchange.

Once finished, the Commander stood just off to the General's elbow and tucked both hands behind the small of her back. It was a strange contrast to the way Intelligence handled things.

"You've finished your evaluation?" Tatham asked Bartos, glancing down at one particular tablet that had been set aside and Bartos straightened.

"Yes sir, but there is a logistical issue."

Tatham ran his hand down the spine of the tablet and blinked at the screen. "Nh," he waved to May, who gave it a cursory look. "Drone issue. _Fantastic_."

"I can get my men to press in close but there has to be someone in there to manually detonate the charge."

May knew what that meant. S.H.I.E.L.D. was not above asking someone to sacrifice their life for the greater good, but it was a rare occurrence for a reason. The recent string of engagements from the Inhumans and the Russians and the LMD's had built up a fairly hefty casualty rate among the personnel and while they could smile and reflect on their gallant sacrifices, they knew it was also beyond reproach and it shouldn't be happening in the first place, not at rate that it had been. Winston looked as unhappy at the prospect as May did. He tilted back as far as the steel back of his chair would let him, leaning heavily on his fist as he thought.

"Are you sure it's not an option?" Winston asked, meekly, and at Bartos' mild look of immediate outrage, which was quickly stifled when it's ill-natured presence was detected, the man actually winced.

"The site is fitted with numerous EMP triggers. As soon as we put a drone in that vicinity it'll be fried."

May wistfully wished that Fitz's own selection of drones were available at this moment. It was an impossible venture, now, but she still thought about it. "S.H.I.E.L.D. has the tech to overcome that, right?" She asked, frowning.

Bartos made a face. "This stuff is fairly new, from what Albertyn could see. We sent in one of ours to see and the feed was there but it was... difficult. We've been barred under Section 7 of the Unsanctioned Arms Protocol from using our own tech capable of arming the droid due to inconsistencies in damage capabilities — bureaucratic speak for our stuff is too dangerous and is classified as a WMD and ergo illegal in Europe. We have to use the stuff sanctioned or the UN is going to be looking down their sights at us; those drones were designed at the last minute to be capable of getting in there before melting down, according to their safety specifications." She paused, looked at the General. "The Director is on Line 6, sir. He wants an update as to where we're going to go from here."

Winston shut his eyes for a moment, breathed out hard and deflated. "We have to take that refinery out." Rubbing his hand along his bearded jaw, he frowned in thought. "How far can you get the bomb droid in?"

"Not quite close enough," Bartos replied through gritted teeth. "The drones have a strong enough feed to provide imagery and we planned to have one of our men use the feed from there to drive the droid in, but cameras won't last all the way. The offending electric output from the EMPs will damage the tech."

"It won't detonate prematurely?"

"It's not that kind of explosive, sir."

Once they were in the air, they were treated with the timely arrival of a medium sized man and a taller, slender Korean woman dressed in a smart, but classy conservative fashion. The male was also wearing a suit, but when he clocked Winston sat in the chair, he proceeded to salute like a trooper might.

"Well, lawsy me. If it isn't John fucking Dutcheval." Bartos snarled. "Looking good there, lanyard."

So-called-Agent Dutcheval gave Bartos an amused but by no means less withering look. "Please," he groaned. "Spare me."

May glanced at Winston, who sighed. "Dutch has been... adopted temporarily by the Intelligence division. He has certain skills that were required and, well, it wasn't exactly a popular venture with the rest of his playmates, that'll say."

Scuffle on the playground was the sudden impression May got. _You can't sit with us_.

"Shag any cute suits while you're out there playing spy?" Bartos asked conversationally, but before Dutch could reply — and he looked more than ready to do so, May realized, with shining eyes and almost manic glee — Winston learned forward.

"Place nice!" The General warned. "Don't make me hang you from the naughty tiebeam, both of you. We have _guests_ , children. _Behave_."

"You know you love me," Dutch grinned. He turned to Winston. "And you can't hang us on the naughty tiebeam. Some guy by the name of Albertyn is already up there."

Bartos frowned, the surprise of Albertyn's predicament overriding her apparent displeasure of Dutcheval. "The fuck did Bertie do?"

May smiled.

Winston sighed. "And this is...?"

Dutch jerked in surprise. "Oh," he turned, bowed. "Excuse us." He said to the woman and then turned back to Winston. "This is Minako Imai..."

The General's face immediately went hard and he stood, slowly. "Ah." He inhaled. "Bartos, you've... You know..."

Bartos snapped her booted feet together in wordless salute and smartly made her way over to Imai, bowing at the waist as she did so.

"If you'll come with me, I would explain the proceedings to you."

Charmed by the younger woman's respectful demeanor, Imai nodded towards Dutch, who bowed in turn, and walked out with Bartos. The latter lagged behind so she could stick a middle finger up right in front of Dutch's face before leaving. The man himself took it with some restraint.

He blinked at the General. "I'm never going to live this one down, am I?" He asked.

Winston shook his head. "Literally unforgivable."

But then something must have crossed his mind, because he took one glance at May, twigged something, and slowly turned his chair to face Dutch properly.

"Actually... Dutch, my man, my boy, I think there is something you can do for us to make amends..."

"Oh for fucks' sake."

 **›››››››‹‹‹‹‹‹‹**

 **Consider this the introduction to what should have been a full chapter.**

I debated putting this out. It's been awhile, and a lot of things need explaining. Let's talk.

First thing's first; I've been the victim of a burglary. My computer, with it everything I have on it and my other stories, was stolen shortly before I came home from my army trip. It wasn't just my computer - my possessions, most of my family things, a lot of my equipment and practically anything of monetary value is gone. I left my car keys at home; both the keys and my car are gone. I came back to a house that had been ripped apart. My neighbor let me know the second she had realized, and the police came round to explain in more detail when I got home. It's unlikely I'll get anything back; they've examined the house but these things, rather, unfortunately, happen. Thankfully my neighbor managed to save a few things that had been left behind. I'm grateful to her.

For a young person living independently from their parents in a different country, it's... terrifying, to put it bluntly.

I went back to Germany for a few weeks but I'm back in the UK now. In this time I've since moved - I'm okay, and I'm living with a friend of mine until I can save up enough to get another apartment. I don't know how long that will be, truthfully; it's been a bit of a slog, and I can't say I'm too confident in finding my own space again. It's done a number on my self-esteem and security.

This is a problem. Truth is, it's really done a number on my ability to sit down and write. I'm looking at what I've got on online space and there is just this massive, frustrating wall that is stopping me from _getting it_. Sniperil, my co-author, has been generous enough to help me with the above but on my end, it's very hard.

What I honestly think this thing is, is burnout. Don't get me wrong, I love MCU stuff, but I went on this army trip looking for some downtime from the online world and to get boots dirty to come back to... turmoil. I'm sharing a laptop with my roommate. I'm back and forth with police desperately trying to find out if they have anything, knowing all too well that it's probably a lost cause. The main issue, I feel, is that I've got other priorities - other interests, even. It's honestly hard for me to concentrate on Marvel stuff. I was losing interest before I set off, and now... I feel almost zip.

I have a problem with this. I flip and flop back on different things and devote all my consciousness to said thing, and it makes it hard when I burn out because I'm _committed_. I really WANT to continue, but it's not there. So, honestly, I just want to sit back and take things in rather than dish them out myself. So, what I'm going to do is read other people's work for a bit. Meddle around in some smaller original projects. Get a feel for what I love in Marvel, watch a few movies with my friends, binge some AoS and AC. Hopefully, in time, I'll jumpstart back into it.

So, what I've planned to do is to stop after part 1 and take a small break, re-find the love I have in Marvel and just recuperate for a bit.

I probably won't be on this site in particular until then, but I've replaced my LiveJournal with a forum. You can find it at _maxhyenada dot ProBoards dot com_. I'll be doing some smaller bits relating to this SYOC on there, like developing the character sheets to fit the new theme and uploading them - uploading character sheets for characters like Bartos and Winston, and getting into long-winded essays about worldbuilding. I've started doing some worldbuilding myself as an outlet to try and keep my skills up, so if you're interested in fantasy steampunk fascism and gang culture, well, you now know where to look.

So, if you wondering where I'll be until then, I'll be off inventing a fantasy thing with magic flimsier than wet toilet paper in a public bathroom, tricorns, European Romans Gone Rouge, street children with guns, drugs, people who can rip other people apart with their minds, birds with arms who steal corpses, gangs, tattoos, gang tattoos, fascists getting socked in the balls, complicated moral issues involving Bad People and Redemption, some cannibalism, and terrible people. Well. I'll be doing that while getting my head settled.

Other than that... Yeah.


End file.
